Base’s Shift Away From Optimism Raises Questions About Superchain’s Future

Base’s decision to move away from the OP Stack to a unified software stack is raising questions about the long-term economics behind Optimism’s Superchain model.

The OP Mainnet, which is powered by the OP Stack, is currently the third-largest Ethereum Layer-2 by total value locked (TVL) at $1.84 billion, per L2beat.

OP, Optimism’s native token, is currently trading at around $0.14, down 26% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The sell-off followed a Wednesday, Feb. 18, blog post from Base – the Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain launched by Coinbase with a TVL of $3.8 billion – outlining plans to move away from Optimism’s software over the coming months.

Experts told The Defiant this move matters because Base is the biggest network using Optimism’s technology. If Base steps away, it raises doubts about whether the Superchain can keep growing its shared revenue over time.

Optimism’s Superchain Model

Under Optimism’s Superchain model, chains that join agree to share a small portion of their fees with the Optimism Collective, according to an official Optimism blog post from 2024. Specifically, each chain sends back either 2.5% of its chain revenue or 15% of its on-chain profits (after costs and gas fees), whichever is higher.

Because Base has been one of the busiest rollups, it was widely seen as one of the biggest contributors to this shared pool.

“Base moving away from the OP Superchain isn’t that surprising when you look at the incentives,” said Shresth Agrawal, CEO of Pod Network. “Base was reportedly contributing around 97% of the revenue, so at some point the ‘Superchain tax’ becomes hard to justify.”

Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, told The Defiant that Base was processing roughly four times more transactions than Optimism, generating about 144 times more decentralized exchange (DEX) volume, and producing 80 times more gas fees.

“The ~26% crash in OP (now around $0.14) is the market repricing the whole Superchain thesis,” Sondergaard added. “If Coinbase’s Base, the flagship OP Stack chain, is leaving to build their own stack, why would anyone else stay and share revenue?”

However, Agrawal said that the broader issue, in his opinion, is licensing. “The OP Stack became the default L2 framework partly because it embraced open-source norms,” Agrawal explained. “But fully permissive licenses make monetization difficult—large, well-distributed players can fork or internalize the stack without long-term revenue sharing.”

He pointed to alternatives such as business-style licenses (similar to Arbitrum’s early approach), which he said may be harder to adopt at first but could prove more commercially sustainable.

“Main Revenue Driver”

Meanwhile, Oxytocin, head of ecosystem at Umia and a former Optimism governance delegate, explained to the Defiant that rollup partnerships like Base are integral to Optimism’s long-term revenue narrative.

“While this revenue would go directly to the Foundation as opposed to a token-controlled treasury, the value accrued through these kinds of deals with rollups was one of the main proposed revenue drivers,” Oxytocin said. “The timing of this announcement will also impact the effectiveness of the recently proposed OP buyback scheme.”

In January, the Optimism Foundation proposed a buyback program that would use 50% of incoming Superchain revenue to purchase OP tokens starting sometime in February. The plan is meant to better align the token’s value with the growth of the Superchain ecosystem.

Moving Forward

The Defiant reached out to Optimism for comment and was redirected to an X post by Jing Wang, the CEO of OP Labs and Co-founder of Optimism. “This is a hit to near-term on-chain revenues,” Wang wrote on Feb.18. “But as cryptotwitter has been saying for ages, we needed to evolve our biz model.”

Wang added that the OP Stack remains the “most performant” and has “endured the most traffic in production,” regardless of Base’s fork. Data from DeFiLlama shows that the TVL in Optimism Bridge is $498 million, down sharply from its peak of around $5 billion in 2024.

In an official statement, Optimism said it was “grateful” for its three-year partnership with Base and that it will continue working with Base as an OP Enterprise customer “while they build out their independent infrastructure.”

The development also comes as Optimism is attracting new partners. On Wednesday, decentralized finance (DeFi) firm EtherFi said it plans to move its Cash accounts and card program from Scroll to Optimism’s OP Mainnet.

The move is expected to bring $160 million in TVL and more than 70,000 active cards to the network, The Defiant previously reported. Both companies described the move as a long-term partnership.

“While the recent news is a significant shakeup for many, I remain confident that OP Labs will be able to iterate on their value mission and continue attracting new members to the OP Stack, like the recent announcement from EtherFi,” Oxytocin concluded. “Optimism’s ethos has always been one of strong reflection and iteration, and they have proven many times in the past that they are able to re-align their roadmap as needed.”