Optimism’s Jing Wang and the Widely Adopted OP Stack

Ethereum (ETH), the most important smart-contracts blockchain, for years has had a scalability difficulty. As extra customers joined the Ethereum ecosystem, the community grew to become costlier and slower to make use of.

To resolve a part of that difficulty, beginning in 2019, Ethereum neighborhood members got here out with their very own scaling options, known as layer 2s, or rollups. Optimism (OP) was one of many first in the marketplace.

Now, Optimism’s expertise is broadly utilized by many entities to create their very own layer-2 networks. In 2024, Kraken, Uniswap, World Community (previously Worldcoin) and Sony’s Blockchain Lab all tapped Optimism’s tech to create their very own scaling blockchains. Because the OP staff has been capable of persuade a few of crypto’s largest establishments to make use of their expertise and be a part of its ecosystem, Optimism’s founding staff, led by Jing Wang, is nominated for CoinDesk’s 2024 Most Influential checklist. This profile is a part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 bundle. For all of this yr’s nominees, click on right here.

“If you need to put the finger on the heartbeat of the lifeline of the Optimism Collective, it’s Jing Wang,” mentioned Ben Jones, one other co-founder of Optimism and a director on the Optimism Basis, to CoinDesk in an interview.

The founding staff consists of some Ethereum OGs together with Wang, Jones, Karl Floersch, Mark Tyneway, Kelvin Fichter and Kevin Ho. However their story dates again to 2016 when Wang was launched to Floersch, a former researcher on the Ethereum Basis (EF), forward of making Optimism.

B.O. (Earlier than Optimism)

“The primary time that we met, we had been in a circle. We had been all speaking, and each time a brand new particular person entered the circle, Jing would make it a particular level to make them really feel included, and ask them a particular query, to combine them into the remainder of the expertise,” mentioned Jones when requested about his first solo encounter with Wang.

“That is positively not modified. Actually, she’s grow to be solely extra able to that sort of stuff at bigger and bigger scales on the time as a frontrunner of the Collective.”

Learn extra: Is Optimism’s ‘Superchain’ Successful the Ethereum Layer-2 Race?

Wang bought her begin in crypto first via the Bitcoin world, however expressed frustration with the dearth of girls collaborating in that developer ecosystem, in line with a chat she gave at a16z’s crypto startup faculty in July 2023. It was Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum creator who additionally was a Bitcoin maxi, who satisfied her to look into Ethereum, and launched her to Floersch.

On the EF, Floersch took Wang beneath his wing, and gave her a “textbook” writing challenge. (The opposite challenge that was provided to her was a coding challenge, however finally was given to a different mentee, Hayden Adams, who finally created Uniswap from that, the most important decentralized cryptocurrency change on Ethereum immediately, in line with DefiLlama.)

The “textbook” challenge that Wang started to focus her time on was Plasma, a scaling design that predates rollups, which finally grew to become the precursor to what Optimism is immediately.

“That’s fairly f****** loopy,” mentioned Wang on the a16z speak in regards to the beginnings of Optimism and Uniswap, “however that’s the way it began.”

Plasma was largely an instructional train that centered on scaling transactions on Ethereum. However finally Wang, alongside Floersch, created the Plasma Group, a non-profit that pushed ahead scaling analysis.

In line with Wang, after the Plasma Group was created, she noticed that individuals actually needed a layer 2 with decrease charges and quick transactions, so that they pivoted and got here up with sketches for an optimistic rollup.

As a result of Plasma was a nonprofit, it was arduous for the staff to seek out sufficient funding to show their analysis into merchandise. “We had been fed up with attempting to persuade anyone aside from our loopy selves to hitch a analysis nonprofit that was accepting donations, and had been hoping that continued to work,” mentioned Jones to CoinDesk. “We had been constructing essential public items, and scaling infrastructure that wanted to occur with blockchain to take over the world, and simply no one was funding it.”

“So a part of what we did was we vowed to by no means have any individual else need to be in that scenario once more, as we turned in the direction of Optimism and constructed out the Optimism Collective,” Jones added.

Optimism’s technological progress

Optimism was created in 2019 and the community was up and operating by the tip of 2021. Later, the corporate operating Optimism cut up into two entities, OP Labs BPC, the primary developer agency serving to construct the Optimism blockchain, and the Optimism Basis, which helps steward Optimism’s governance system in addition to pushes ecosystem progress.

Wang was the CEO of Optimism BPC earlier than the cut up, and have become the Basis’s CEO and government director on the time of the cut up in 2022.

Optimism’s blockchain is powered by a expertise known as optimistic rollups, which bundle giant quantities of transaction information into digestible batches, making it cheaper to transact on it than on Ethereum. Rollups have grow to be so widespread {that a} spew of them have popped up since Optimism went stay. Different notable names embody Arbitrum, Blast, zkSync, Polygon, Starknet and Scroll.

As the key rollups began to realize traction, a brand new development emerged from the main layer-2 tasks, what could be referred to as “blockchain in a field,” the place the groups inspired builders to clone their code, so they may spin up their very own layer 2s. For Optimism, its framework grew to become referred to as the OP Stack, and was launched in 2023, through the blockchain’s massive improve known as “Bedrock.”

Chains beneath the OP Stack would be a part of the “Superchain,” a community of blockchains constructed with Optimism’s expertise that may be interoperable, permitting for liquidity to be shared throughout chains whereas all adhering to Optimism’s governance and ethos, referred to as the Collective. The Superchain can also be supposed to deal with the thought of fragmentation, making it simpler for all of the blockchains in that ecosystem to speak with one another and switch funds extra seamlessly.

“That is essential to us: that builders have a very good expertise and do not need to deal with every of those particular person chains in an entire and complete silo, as a result of it will make their lives simpler as nicely,” Jones mentioned.

Opponents like Arbitrum, Polygon, and zkSync additionally began to launch their stacks, and shortly the battle to win over customers and firms to construct on their kits heated up.

The primary main shopper of the OP Stack was Coinbase’s Base community, bringing the most important U.S. change on-chain in August 2023. Since then, many different main firms within the crypto business have additionally come out with their very own layer-2s, and tapped the OP Stack to roll that out. Uniswap, World, Kraken, and Sony’s Blockchain Labs all introduced their layer-2s that might be constructed with OP Stack this yr, making Optimism the clear winner.

Base is at present the second largest layer-2 with $9.8 billion within the protocol, forward of OP which has $6.5 billion, in line with L2 beat. Of the 52 rollups which are stay, 24 of them are constructed on OP Stack with $19 billion locked in them.

As of November 2024, layer 2s on the OP Stack accounted for 52.7% of all Ethereum layer-2 transactions, in line with a spokesperson for the Optimism Basis.

Jones attributes the success of OP Stack to how simple it’s for builders to create their very own chains. “There’s a ton of complexity in simply operating a sequence. And the fact is that simply having good infrastructure that’s dependable, that’s simple to run, simple to take care of, and will not go down, is a brilliant vital a part of the story,” he informed CoinDesk.

Pay-For-Play: a profitable technique?

Opponents of Optimism have famous that a part of OP’s technique to get new networks to make use of their expertise is to offer out giant sums of OP tokens within the type of grants. Officers on the Optimism Basis beforehand informed CoinDesk these grants are supposed to assist builders kickstart their constructing on the stack, and in return are supposed to profit the Collective and different networks in Optimism’s Superchain.

When Base went stay, Coinbase shared that it will obtain 118 million OP tokens, which was at $1.55 on the time of launch, value about $182 million (on the time of writing, it is now value $283 million.) In return, Base dedicated to share 2.5% of its complete income from sequencer charges or 15% of earnings (whichever was larger) to the Collective as a contribution to Optimism’s ecosystem.

Since then, some tasks have been much less forthcoming about what number of tokens they’d obtain from the Optimism Basis for constructing on OP Stack. CoinDesk first reported that Kraken would obtain 25 million OP tokens for constructing on OP Stack, value $100 million on the time of the deal, now value $60 million.

In line with officers at Kraken, the payout was in step with different main tasks acquired from Optimism.

Uniswap, Sony, and Worldcoin all declined to touch upon what number of tokens they may obtain from Optimism over time. Different smaller tasks have shared the variety of OP tokens they may obtain in grants. For example, Celo will get 6.5 million tokens and BOB will get 750,000 tokens.

Optimism Basis officers beforehand informed CoinDesk they go away it as much as the tasks to reveal the quantities of their grants. A spokesperson shared with CoinDesk that the Optimism ecosystem has been clear about their treasury, and that the Kraken deal falls beneath their

“partnerships fund,” which matches “to sure tasks to assist assist preliminary improvement of the chain.”

“I believe it is truthful to call-out that there are lots of groups on the market the place grants are used as a quite common apply within the business,” Jones informed CoinDesk. “We’re not going to draw back from serving to our builders develop, in an business the place grants are helpful in the direction of that.”

The dearth of transparency round what number of OP tokens are designated to chains raises questions on how a lot these grants factored into these offers.

However Jones argues that handing out OP tokens shouldn’t be checked out as simply giving out cash. These tasks are utilizing Optimism’s expertise without spending a dime (because it’s open-sourced) and are contributing to enhance Optimism’s code and software program. In different phrases, they’re being awarded for his or her work on the bigger OP ecosystem, which then will get contributed again to the Collective.

“I might additionally say that it is extraordinarily vital to grasp that we’re constructing a governance system which is meant to offer the individuals in our positive-sum system a voice,” Jones mentioned.

“I believe an important factor to drive house is that, one, this factor (OP Stack) is profitable, even within the elements of the world the place the grants aren’t factored,” Jones added. “Two, I believe that it is simply essentially reductive to speak about these grants when it comes to like some quantity of OP tokens, with out understanding what these OP tokens are for. And I believe it’s completely a crucial a part of the technique for us to unite the set of tasks that make up the Superchain.”

Optimism’s wager is that simple expertise plus grants might be a profitable technique. For now, although, solely time will inform whether or not Optimism stays the winner for Ethereum scaling.