Optimism's Struggles

We believe that OP faces concentrated revenue risk, with 60–70% of Collective revenue coming from Base. While Base contributes the majority of fees, it gains little from interoperability since other chains have negligible activity. This creates a dynamic where Optimism depends on Base far more than Base depends on Optimism.

OP Mainnet has become largely irrelevant compared to Arbitrum and Base, generating only a small fraction of revenue and ecosystem activity. The OP token itself has little value attribution and mostly functions as grant liquidity. Optimism has foregone revenue and fees to build out their stack, leaving them in a difficult position. Recent onboarded L2s have shown weak activity despite significant incentives, while Arbitrum has made progress in attracting more relevant projects such as Converge and Robinhood.

In our view, OP Labs, the Foundation, and the DAO need to present a clearer direction. Until then, we remain underweight OP, as the current model exposes the network to significant customer concentration risk and leaves it behind competitors in the “stack” race.

*This report was edited on September 10th, 2025. We corrected a mistake that previously claimed that Base was a significant portion of aggregate REV for chains in the Superchain instead of Superchain Collective revenue attributable. We incorrectly stated that Ink was paid a 25M OP grant, when in actuality, Ink Foundation was given a milestone-based 25M OP grant, which has not been fully paid.