About Optimism (OP)

Optimism is a layer-2 that aims to speed up Ethereum transactions and cuts their costs by settling them on another blockchain using advanced data compression techniques, Decrypt said. "The special sauce to Optimism’s scaling methodology is a technique called optimistic rollups, whereby multiple transactions are ‘rolled up’ into one transaction, settled on another blockchain, with receipts fed back to the main Ethereum blockchain," Decrypt said.

Martin Köppelmann, co-founder of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchain Gnosis, told Cointelegraph  he thinks Optimism is one of the “leading” projects tackling Ethereum’s scaling issues.

The Optimism Collective said it will be governed co-equally by two houses, Citizens’ House and the Token House. Together, they will drive rapid, sustainable growth in Optimism, Ethereum, and the new internet, the project said. “The Citizens’ House will govern public goods funding, creating a flywheel of protocol development,” the project said.

How is the price of OP determined?

Early recipients of a highly anticipated airdrop, which began in late May of 2022 and ramped up on June 1, tend to cash out quickly and then a coin’s market settles at a natural price. This happens over a longer-term period and is based on two age-old factors: supply (very limited as of June 1, 2022, with just 5% of the total supply having been put into circulation); and demand, as dictated by the success of the project.

Why does OP have value?

It’s touted as a huge fix for a big problem, that being the high cost of building on Ethereum.

Back in March, at the time of the Series B round, Optimism said it was valued at $1.65 billion. The project's blog said, around that time, that Optimism users had saved $1 billion in gas over the last year on mainnet, “during which thousands of codes were deployed, and three forks went live.”

What are the main benefits of OP?

• Optimism slashes fees for developers. One estimate pegged the savings as representing, on average, a one-third reduction relative to the typical Ethereum gas costs. Optimism plans on working towards enhancing the protocol to cut costs even further.
• The project utilizes a layer-2 concept, Optimistic Rollups, and EVM compatibility to effectively scale Ethereum-based applications.
• The team is pushing to true decentralized governance, over time, so the protocol is community led.