What is Optimism (OP)?
OP is the governance token of the Optimism Collective, the community that stewards OP Mainnet and the OP Stack software used by many other rollups. The Optimism Foundation released it in May 2022 with an airdrop to early users.
- Type
- Ethereum layer-2 governance token
- Launched
- 2022
- Consensus
- Secured by Ethereum (optimistic rollup)
- Max supply
- No fixed cap (up to 2% yearly inflation, governance-set)
- Swap network
- Optimism
- Sector (Messari)
- Scaling Solutions
How Optimism works
OP Mainnet is an optimistic rollup that runs transactions off Ethereum and settles them there, with a fault-proof system that lets anyone dispute an invalid state. Governance has two chambers: OP holders and their delegates vote in the Token House, while a separate Citizens' House of users, apps and chains, with one vote per member, can veto protocol upgrades and approves the Collective's budget.
What OP is used for
Holders use OP to vote or delegate in Token House decisions about upgrades, incentives and treasury grants. It is also traded and used in DeFi across OP Mainnet and other chains built with the OP Stack.
OP supply
The initial supply was 4,294,967,296 OP, and the design allows the supply to grow by up to 2% a year, with any change to inflation decided by governance.
Before you swap OP
Gas on OP Mainnet is paid in ETH, so keep some ETH on that network if you plan to move OP afterwards. Check that the destination supports OP on OP Mainnet specifically, since the token and similar-looking addresses exist on other chains.