Optimism Price

What Is Optimism (OP)?

Optimism (OP) is a Layer 2 protocol that offers crypto users cheap and fast transactions on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. It’s designed to address Ethereum’s high gas fees and transaction bottlenecks. On average, transaction fees on Optimism are more than a hundred times cheaper than on Ethereum. The protocol has experienced rapid and sustainable growth since its launch, and is among the most popular Layer 2 solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Optimism also offers consumers and businesses a much more scalable solution than using Ethereum directly. While the Ethereum network is capable of processing around 15 to 25 transactions per second (TPS), Optimism boasts a TPS speed of at least 200. In the future, enhancements to the platform could theoretically help it reach 2,000 TPS.

Optimism was founded in 2019 and launched its network operations gradually throughout 2021. Initially, it operated without its own crypto token. Optimism’s native cryptocurrency, OP, is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that was introduced in May 2022.

What Is OP Used For?

The OP token was introduced primarily for governance, which is carried out jointly by the newly formed Optimism Foundation, the key body overseeing the project, and the Optimism Collective, a decentralized community of OP token holders and delegates.

Token holders can participate in the formal voting process on Optimism to decide on any changes to the protocol, new project grants and more. Optimism uses a system of delegated voting, where any OP token holder may nominate their preferred delegate to vote on their behalf.

The delegates, backed by the OP tokens of other users, are actively involved in the on-platform decision-making process. Each delegate’s voting power is directly dependent on the number of OP tokens backing them up. The OP tokens used for delegating remain freely available to the user, and are simply taken into account during the voting procedure.

The OP token isn’t used on Optimism for transaction fee payments; all the processing fees are paid in Ether. This might change in the future if the platform’s governance community votes to switch to OP for transaction fee payments.

OP Price and Tokenomics

Optimism's price opened at $1.40 on May 31, 2022, and quickly declined to less than a dollar within its first few days on the market. The Optimism token price hit its all-time-low of $0.40 in mid-June 2022 before seeing a spike from late July to early August to an all-time-high of $2.21 on August 4, 2022. Optimism has a total supply and max supply of around 4.29 billion, while its circulating supply is nearly 215 million in September 2022.

OP’s tokenomics specify that the total supply of 4.29 billion will be released gradually until May 2026. The initial release of 5% of the total supply was carried out on May 31, 2022, via an airdrop to eligible token recipients. Several eligible user groups received OP tokens during the airdrop: Repeat users of the Optimism platform, active participants in the governance voting processes, those in control of large capital pools on the platform, and more.

After Airdrop #1, subsequent airdrops are set to distribute another 14% of the token’s total supply. In total, OP’s total supply has the following allocation shares:

• 19% to eligible users via airdrops

• 19% to core contributors — the development team and other key employees

• 17% to the project investors, aptly named “Sugar Xaddies” by Optimism

• 20% to the Retroactive Public Goods Funding pool

• 25% to the Optimism Ecosystem Fund

Who Is the Founder of Optimism? 

Optimism was founded in New York by three technology entrepreneurs: Jinglan Wang, Karl Floersch and Kevin Ho. Wang is the project’s CEO. He’s active in the tech investment field as an angel investor, and has at least six investments in various blockchain projects.

Floersch is Optimism’s CTO. A software engineer since 2014, he had a three-year stint at the Ethereum Foundation as a researcher before co-founding Optimism. The third co-founder, Kevin Ho, holds the position of Protocol Product Manager.

Optimism has raised a total of $178.5 million in venture capital funding from three institutional investors — IDEO CoLab Ventures, Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz.

How Does Optimism Work?

Optimism uses optimistic rollup technology to achieve its cost and speed efficiencies. Rollups are a type of Layer 2 technology which processes transactions off-chain, and then posts them to the underlying blockchain, Layer 1, in batches.

Optimistic rollups post transaction batches to the blockchain with the assumption that they’re all valid. If, after a batch is posted, Layer 1 validators spot any data inconsistencies, they will reject the batch. Due to this a priori assumption of the batch validity, these rollups are called optimistic.

Optimism is designed to be simple, pragmatic and sustainable. It does all this by implementing EVM equivalence in its optimistic rollup technology so that the Optimism L2 blockchain can evolve together with the Ethereum L1 blockchain effortlessly.

To move funds from Ethereum to Optimism, you can use the Optimism Bridge, a bridging solution designed for the transfer of ERC-20 tokens. Transaction fees are charged in ETH. You can also move tokens from some other popular chains or Layer 2 platforms — BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Polygon, Gnosis Chain and Arbitrum. However, for the non-Ethereum transfers, you’ll need to use a third-party bridge, such as Hop Protocol, Stargate or Celer cBridge.

Depositing funds to Optimism is a nearly instantaneous process. However, moving your funds back to Ethereum is subject to a 7-day holding period, called the verification challenge period. If you use other chains’ tokens to withdraw to the respective chain via a third-party bridge, the waiting period is usually much shorter — around 20 minutes or less.

What Makes Optimism Unique?

Low cost of transacting

Optimism fees are typically hundreds of times cheaper than the gas fees charged by Ethereum.

Speed and scalability benefits

Optimism transactions have near-instant confirmation times. The only big drawback of the platform is the lengthy wait period for withdrawals back to a Layer 1 chain.

Regular airdrops

The OP token has regular airdrops scheduled to run until May 2026. Repeat users and other actively involved stakeholders of the platform may benefit from these freebies.

How to Store OP

OP is an ERC-20 token and can thus be stored in any wallet supporting this widely used standard. Popular software wallets for ERC-20 tokens include MetaMask, Trust Wallet, MathWallet and Brave Wallet, among others. Popular hardware wallets, such as Ledger and Trezor, may also be used to store OP tokens.

Where to Buy Optimism (OP)

You can buy OP from any top crypto exchange, including Bybit.

How to Buy OP on Bybit

To purchase OP on the Bybit exchange, follow these simple steps:

1. Head to Bybit’s spot trading page (Home → Trade → Spot Trading).

2. Select the trading pair on the left side of the page. You can trade OP with USDT (OP/USDT) and USDC (OP/USDC).

3. Choose the type of order you’d like: Limit Order, Market Order or Conditional Order.

For Limit Orders:

1. Select Limit.

2. Enter the order price.

3. Enter the number of OP you wish to buy.

4. Click on Buy OP.

5. Once you’ve confirmed your information is correct, click on Buy OP.

6. View your order details under Active on the web page, or Orders if you’re using the Bybit app.

For Market Orders:

1. Select Market.

2. Enter the amount in USDT you’ve paid to buy OP.

3. Click on Buy OP.

4. Once you’ve confirmed your information is correct, click on Buy OP.

5. View your order details under Filled.

For Conditional Orders:

1. Select Conditional.

2. Enter the trigger price.

3. Choose to execute at Market Price or Limit Price.

1. Market Price: Order price doesn’t need to be set.

2. Limit Price: Order price needs to be set.

4. According to order types:

1. Market Buy: Enter the amount in USDT you’ve paid to buy OP.

2. Limit Buy: Enter the number of OP you want to buy.

5. Click on Buy OP.

6. Once you’ve confirmed your information is correct, click on Buy OP.

7. View your order details under Conditional on the web page, or All Orders → Current Orders on the Bybit app.

For more help, visit the Bybit spot trading guide.