Optimism (OP)

What Happened to the L2s? @ben_chain and @karl_dot_tech (co-founders of @Optimism ), interviewed by @JasonYanowitz on @theempirepod Summary: The 2 Optimism co-founders discuss the L2 reckoning, and how Optimism pivoted from running a single chain to an enterprise SaaS model selling customized, differentiated block space to institutions. Along the way they cover Optimism's moat, who actually needs their own chain, the state of Ethereum, the experience of having a token, and what defines success in crypto. 1. Hype Meets Reality. The short version of what happened to L2s is hype meeting reality. Crypto moved from speculative blue-sky ambition to actually delivering value to end users, which requires real product development and product-market fit. Many chains and hype projects never had those fundamentals, and when you lack fundamentals, the floor can fall out from under you. @ben_chain frames it as crypto finally being taken seriously by people outside the bubble, so a bit of deflation is unsurprising as the industry moves from memecoin virality and circular dependencies to real businesses considering real products. 2. What L2s Got Right and Wrong. L2s got the delivery vehicle right: extending the L1 and differentiating block space to deliver a good product, rather than reinventing yet another validator-set hype cycle. What they got wrong is assuming you could just launch a chain and a token and throw up your hands when nothing happened. To deliver a good chain, you need to deliver a good product, and a lot of the hype cycle treated L2s as a shortcut to the new hot-chain validator thing instead of making it easy to build on-chain products. 3. Standardized to Specialized. The history runs from bespoke to standardized. The problem is that "standardized block space for all things to all people" is not differentiated and nobody wants it. The transition now is back toward specialized, but unlike bespoke, it means taking a general-purpose platform and tuning it to a specific use case in a product cycle of months rather than a 5-to-10-year R&D cycle. @Optimism is trying to accelerate that, enabling everyone to build differentiated block space. 4. The L2 Meta Is Not Dead. To anyone saying L2s are dead, Karl's response is that it is like saying the server meta is dead. Selling a server in the abstract to a hype machine is dead, but you still need a server to build a product, so they are here for that. The reframe is that block space is just infrastructure, and the deeper value is in what you build on top. 5. Optimism's 2026 Strategy: OP Enterprise. Optimism evolved from running one chain (OP Mainnet, still around and doing well) to OP Enterprise, a managed offering where a customer says "I want a chain" and Optimism handles all the technical details so they can focus on their product and differentiation. This added a new income stream on top of OP Mainnet fees. The founders caution against deluding themselves that crypto is finished being adopted just because a few institutions take it seriously, since crypto is still a fraction of a percent of global markets. 6. @coinbase Was the Breakout Deal. Coinbase was absolutely the breakout deal that clarified how these technology stacks would be used and revealed the enterprise business model. Optimism had an unfair head start in professionalizing, but selling to enterprises required learning SLAs, SLOs, and all the things the traditional stack provides, which they had to build the muscle for. The direction is guided by market demand and signals rather than invented internally. 7. What a Chain Deal Actually Includes. When a financial institution wants the full stack, the deliverables include the sequencer itself (in tiers based on throughput), a block explorer, compliance modules, and crucially RPC providers, since any app needs a connection to chain state. They are also actively exploring native protocol-level customizations like native lending or a native DEX. 8. Why Enterprise SaaS Over Fees. Optimism chose an enterprise SaaS model over a percentage-of-fees model because legibility to existing businesses is something crypto has badly undervalued. Telling an institution you will take a percentage cut of all their fees makes you look crazy, whereas a predictable monthly pricing model based on usage, with the ability to take control of their own infrastructure at any point, is something a business can actually read and understand. A legible fee model is what lets you build a trusting relationship and reassures the customer you will not go out of business in a couple of months. 9. @Optimism 's Moat: Production Experience and Trust. In enterprise deals Optimism competes with the likes of Arbitrum, Canton, Solana, and ZK Sync. Their edge is production experience, having transitioned people onto their own chains accounting for greater than 50% of all L2 transactions, plus the reps and track record of working with enterprises, especially CEXs like Coinbase with @base , Kraken with @inkonchain , OKX with @XLayerOfficial , and Upbit with @GIWA_by_Upbit . 10. @ethereum 's Competitor Is @Bitcoin , Not @solana or @HyperliquidX . Ethereum is a store of value and the layer for decentralization. Ethereum growing its ecosystem and being a store of value are not in conflict, unless Ethereum sacrificed its decentralization and sound-money properties, which the founders do not see happening. L2s are the differentiated block space, and the responsibility of competing with Solana or Hyperliquid falls to the L2s. 11. On Having a Token. Having launched a token at a hot peak gave Optimism a big treasury and balance sheet, which has been a great thing for capitalization overall. The downside is that watching the price chart can be absolutely brutal for morale, so the sanctuary is focusing on fundamentals and not watching the macro-driven craziness. The key is not being in a runway crunch, having recurring revenue, and crucially not becoming laser-focused on "number go up," which would be a dramatically different and worse story than building decentralized governance with real value behind it. 12. The Endgame: Crypto as the Backend. The ultimate goal is for crypto to be the backend for the best web platforms, enabling decentralized social, on-chain gaming, and full read-write-own scenarios, provided the technical complexity can be reduced to match or exceed web2. It may not look like decentralized social built from the ground up, it might compose with existing platforms in fancy ways, with an AI bot generating a custom front end. Crypto has a foundation no one else can provide, but does not yet have the tech, "soon."

@ben_chain @karl_dot_tech @Optimism @JasonYanowitz @theempirepod Video: https://t.co/v2jn8dKcfv