What is Optimism (OP)?
Optimism was developed by Optim PBC (later renamed OP Labs PBC), founded in 2019 in New York. Startup was opened by Jinlan Van, Kevin Ho and Karl Floresh, who were previously developers of Ethereum.
During the work, the project attracted investment in the amount of $ 178.5 million on three investment rounds.
To manage the collected tools and the development of ecosystem development, they founded the non -profit organization Optim Foundation. It was led by Optimism fellow citizens, as well as Eva Beilin (director Graph Foundation), Abby Titkomb (head of the Radicle community) and Brian Avllo from Maker Foundation.
It is planned that in the future the fund will share its powers with a decentralized management organization Optim Collective.The OP Labs PBC team launched Optimism’s test network in October 2019, the alpha version of the main network in January 2021, and the final release of the main network with EVM support in December 2021.
How the Optimism tokens is arranged?
Optimism L2 has a Native OP control token, which was launched on May 31, 2022.
The total OP proposal is 4.3 billion tokens, which will be distributed as follows:
- 20% – for participants in the Optimim Collective community;
- 25% reserved for ecosystem funds;
- 19% will be distributed to users in the form of airrod;
- 17% are intended for early investors;
- 19% – team and developers.
The first airrrop token was one of the largest crypto industry in the history: since May 31, 2022, more than 248 thousand users of Optimism ecosystems received 251 million OPs, which amounted to 5% of the total proposal of tokens. It is planned that another 14% of the emission will be distributed among users in the form of several retroderos.
According to the Optimism documentation, the OP token has the following functions that will be connected gradually:
- financing for the development of the Optimism ecosystem;
- participation in the vote for updating the protocol and the distribution of funds of funds;
- Participation in project management in the Optimism Collective community.
How Optimism works?
Optimistic Rollups technology uses the Optimistic Rollups technology to increase and minimize transaction costs. The essence of the technology is that transactions processing and performing smart contracts occur in a second-level network, while the main network of Ethereum is entrusted with the task of generating blocks and ensuring safety.
Optimism has its own Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM) virtual machine, which allows you to launch smart contracts and decentralized applications written for Ethereum without changes.
To increase the speed of transactions OVM, it works on the principle of “optimistic execution” without checking each transaction for authenticity. That is, unlike the main network Ethereum, in the L2 Optimism L2, any transaction is considered genuine until the opposite has been proven. This allows you to achieve productivity from 200 to 2000 transactions per second compared to 10 transactions per second in Ethereum.
To ensure safety (for example, to avoid double expenses), OVM allows participants in the network to dispute the authenticity of transactions.
Special computing nodes called sequences combine hundreds of transactions made in L2 networks in compact “storage packages”, which are included in blocks in the main network of Ethereum.
Another type of nodes – verifiers – can challenge the authenticity of transaction proposals sent by sequences within one week. If the transaction is challenged by the verifier, then the entire package is checked by comparing the root states before and after the transaction.
If the audit shows that the proposal is fraudulent, the entire transaction package and the corresponding unit are rejected, the vigilant verifier receives a reward, and the sequences are fined. Thus, verifiers are awarded for exposing unscrupulous participants, and sequences receive a reward only for sending the right offers on transactions.
Since each package contains hundreds of transactions, gas fee is distributed between all users. According to the L2FEES service.Info, in August 2022, the commission for the Optimism network fell below $ 0.04, and for the exchange of tokens-below $ 0.07, which is up to 30-100 times cheaper than fees on the Ethereum network.
What is included in the Optimism ecosystem?
Optimism is now operating on the basis of more than 60 decentralized protocols, inter-sequet bridges and other blockchain projects. The network is supported by the most popular web3-pies: Metamask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and others. The largest stablcoins are also produced in the Optimism blockchain: USDT, USDC, DAI, FRAX, USDD, etc. D.
According to the Defillama service, in the TOP-5 applications in terms of blocked liquidity (TVL) operating on the basis of Optimism, includes:
- Landing protocol AAVE;
- Sinthetix derivatives platform;
- Decentralized exchanges Velodrome and Uniswap;
- Pooletogether game platform.
To support the development of the Optimim Foundation ecosystem, gives grants to developers and teams that launch Dapps andWeb3 services on the Optimism protocol. In November 2021, the first round of “retroactive financing” was held, during which $ 1 million was divided between 58 projects.
Optimism ecosystem pays great attention to the development of NFT projects. Among the interesting NFT collections, experts call Optipunks, Optimistic Bunnies, Optimistic Loggies, Dope Wars, OE40, TOFUNFT, Quixotic, Circular Art.
As in other blockchain platforms, several large incidents are associated with applications on Optimism. In June 2022, the hacker “intercepted” 20 million OPs in the amount of about $ 17 million, which Optim Foundation sent the Wintermute market maker, but then returned the means to the recipient.
Less than a month later, the largest NFT marketplace based on Optimism, Quixotic, underwent a hacker attack.
How Optimism develops?
As of August 2022, the Optimism protocol due to the low cost of transactions saved users more than $ 1 billion.
The main efforts of the team are now focused on building a new L2-network management system, in which the powers will be distributed between Optim Foundation and Optimism Collective members.
According to the concept published in April 2022, Optim Collective is a decentralized autonomous organization for digital democratic management, created to ensure a rapid and sustainable growth of a decentralized ecosystem.
Optimism Collective will consist of two control chambers:
- The Citizens House – includes the owners of indescribable “Soul Bound” NFT, tied to a specific address;
- The token House – includes OP owners OP and works as a traditional Tao.
It is expected that The Merge event planned for September 2022, which completes the Ethereum transition to Proof-Of-Stake, will have a huge stimulating effect on the Optimism protocol. First of all, this will happen thanks to the implementation of Rollup-Centric Roadmap-an unofficial Ethereum roadmap, focused on close interaction with L2 solutions to increase scalability.
At the end of July 2022, the Optimism team introduced the automation system for Ethereum transaction called Drippie.