Viewpoint: Several Impacts of Optimism's Token Launch on Ecological Development

Author: Web3er Liu, CatcherVC Analyst

Recently, the news of Optimism, one of the four major Layer 2 solutions, issuing tokens has caused a sensation in the entire crypto industry and attracted widespread attention. So what changes will Optimism undergo after this token issuance? This article will analyze the OP token issuance event from important perspectives such as transaction fees, node incentives, and governance rights, interpreting the impact on its ecological construction.

1. After OP token issuance, transaction fees can be lowered, starting a "price war" with other Layer 2s

As is well known, the core of Layer 2 value capture lies in transaction fees. Different L2 solutions are doing their utmost to improve related mechanisms, often aiming to reduce Gas fees. Recently, Metis significantly lowered Gas fees by directly modifying its storage layer structure, bringing Gas down to the level of Polygon, creating strong price competitiveness against other L2s.

For OP, since the current Sequencer block-producing nodes are all operated by the official team, Gas fees have been their most important source of income in the past. This means that OP officials cannot lower transaction fees to a few cents like Metis, which has already issued tokens. However, after this token issuance, OP has gained other sources of income, fundamentally solving its financial issues, which gives it a strong incentive to adjust the proportion of transaction fee structures and reduce Gas .

Specifically, Optimism's fee structure can be divided into L1 part + L2 part, where the L1 part accounts for 99.6%, covering the total cost of the Sequencer publishing data from Layer 2 to Layer 1. Its specific structure can be expressed as:

L1 GasPrice × Dynamic Coefficient × (Fixed Cost + Data Storage Fee)

Here, the Fixed Cost covers the costs incurred by the Sequencer when packaging data locally and transmitting data packets across domains to ETH network nodes; the Data Storage Fee mainly involves the Gas costs of storing data packets in a specified contract address on ETH, and the Dynamic Coefficient is a buffer fund reserved by OP to prevent ETH Gas from surging, ensuring that the Sequencer can smoothly store data on ETH at any time.

According to Optimism's official documentation, the Fixed Cost and Dynamic Coefficient are completely set by OP officials, meaning they can be lowered or raised at will, essentially depending on their own decisions. Before the token issuance, this was basically the main source of official income. After this token issuance, the OP officials and the OP ecosystem foundation obtained nearly 40% of the token share, with 20% of the token share used for the construction of OP public facilities, essentially solving OP's financial issues, allowing it to freely lower Gas fees.

• (Reference: The Road to Sub-dollar Transactions Part 1: Slashing Fees by 30%) *

2. After OP token issuance, high-intensity incentives can be provided to Verifier nodes, improving network reliability

In blockchain systems, incentive mechanisms have always been one of the core aspects of mechanism design. Since Layer 2's Verifier nodes are to be operated by private institutions outside of the official team, incentivizing node operators is very important.

In the past, since Optimism had not issued tokens, it could not provide high-intensity incentives to Verifier node operators like other Layer 2s that had issued tokens, leading to low enthusiasm among community members for running verification nodes. In this regard, OP officials even complained in a medium document: "Users almost never proactively run full nodes (Verifier nodes)."

With the official issuance of OP tokens, the officials can vigorously incentivize Verifier node operators with OP tokens instead of ETH, significantly expanding the scale of nodes and thereby improving network reliability.** At the same time, the token issuance can also provide higher operational incentives for Sequencer nodes. If OP introduces a decentralized Sequencer solution in the future, high incentives will encourage more private institutions to operate Sequencers, benefiting decentralization.

3. OP token issuance makes its ecological governance more decentralized

We can envision the following scenario: If Optimism did not have its own tokens, how would OP community members participate in ecological governance when staking assets? Clearly, the most immediate way would be to stake ETH. Users would need to spend money to purchase ETH or borrow ETH assets through lending protocols and pay interest, which fundamentally raises the threshold for OP users to obtain voting rights.

However, after the issuance of OP tokens, many early users can receive a large amount of airdrops for free, which essentially provides many people with free voting rights, significantly increasing the decentralization of governance. As long as users do not sell their OP tokens, they can almost permanently participate in OP ecological governance, which is quite significant for the development of Layer 2.

Overall, the token issuance allows Optimism to have the power to mint tokens like the Federal Reserve, solving its financial issues. Next, OP can adjust the activity intensity of the ecosystem through token policies, which can be achieved by launching liquidity mining incentive programs, various hackathon events, and ecological project subsidy programs. At the same time, the token issuance also allows OP to raise a large amount of funds through token financing, thereby gaining stronger vitality, similar to star projects like Terra, Near, and Avalanche that raised funds again long after their token issuance, the benefits of which are self-evident.

4. Potential Issues

Although the official statement from Optimism provided a specific token distribution plan, it did not clearly indicate whether OP tokens would be used as the pricing unit for Layer 2 Gas fees. If OP tokens are not used as a payment method for Gas, it will lose one of the most important consumption scenarios, which is not conducive to gaining bullish market expectations.

However, overall, since the token issuance has solved the financial issues, OP officials have sufficient motivation to lower Gas fees and can quickly expand the scale of network nodes, which will undoubtedly give them a higher voice in competition with Arbitrum, Metis, and the ZK duo, ensuring they do not fall behind in the recent Gas "price war" initiated by Metis.