Original: DL News
Translated by: PANews
A top US crypto exchange is overhauling its nearly three-year partnership with a Layer 2 developer: Coinbase's Base blockchain will now use its own code, moving away from reliance on Optimism's OP Stack.
A spokesperson for Optimism confirmed that Coinbase will stop sharing Base chain revenue with the Optimism Collective. During their partnership, this share amounted to over $16 million.
"This is a blow to onchain revenue in the short term," said Jing Wang, CEO of OP Labs, on X. "But as the crypto community has long said, we need to upgrade the business model."
She added that Coinbase will continue to collaborate as a customer of OP Labs' "OP Enterprise" services.
Base's "going solo" directly hit the price of Optimism's OP token. Since Wednesday, OP has plunged by a quarter, trading at just under $0.14 at the time of writing, far below its 2024 all-time high of $4.84.
For a long time, Coinbase shared 15% of Base's revenue with the Optimism Collective, the digital cooperative managing the OP Stack. To date, Base has contributed 8,387 ETH, worth approximately $16.4 million at Wednesday's prices.
This money accounted for 41% of the Optimism Collective's total historical revenue. In recent months, Base's contribution share surged sharply, reaching 90% in January.
Therefore, this change could significantly impact the Superchain, a coalition of blockchains built on the OP Stack, including Sony's Soneium, Uniswap's Unichain, Kraken's Ink, Worldcoin's World Chain, and Optimism's own OP Mainnet.
Neither Jing Wang nor Coinbase responded to DL News' requests for comment.
"We are grateful for the three-year partnership with Base and proud to have helped it become one of the most successful L2s in history," an Optimism spokesperson said in a statement to DL News. "Our focus remains on providing enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure for the ecosystem and we will continue to serve Base as an OP Enterprise customer while they build their independent tech stack."
"Disappointing"
Private company OP Labs has raised over $175 million from firms like a16z and Paradigm. Its engineers maintain and upgrade the OP Stack, but any proposals require approval from the Optimism Collective.
Related entity the Optimism Foundation recently stated it would transfer some of the responsibility for funding OP Labs' operations to the Collective.
"Tribute" from Superchain members is denominated in ETH. This multi-million dollar crypto asset was initially idle, with the Collective distributing grants in OP tokens to attract developers to the Superchain — more developers mean more apps, and more apps bring more users.
But Optimism recently began utilizing this ETH asset: In March last year, the Collective approved staking most of the ETH for passive yield; just last month, it also passed a buyback program tying OP token value to Superchain growth. Half of the Collective's revenue will be used to buy back OP, with the Foundation authorized to manage the other half.
Why Build a Superchain?
"This is disappointing but, on many levels, expected," PaperImperium, an anonymous member of GFX Labs, a representative body of the Optimism Collective, told DL News. "Base has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to do what's best for them."
The OP Stack is open-source, meaning anyone can use it for free without permission from Optimism.
"So why would chains like Base, Mode, Worldcoin, Zora, and others in the Superchain choose to share revenue?" Optimism wrote in a 2024 blog post. "The answer lies in the network effects designed to benefit the entire Collective."
Upgrades to the OP Stack were originally planned to integrate Superchain members from an isolated coalition of blockchains into a unified, interoperable network. "Despite years of technical development, this vision unfortunately has not been realized," PaperImperium said.
Coinbase stated the move is to accelerate the upgrade pace, simplify the code, and test features that may eventually land on Ethereum.
"We wouldn't have gotten here this fast without the incredible technical support behind the OP Stack, and we're grateful for the partnership over the last three years," Coinbase said in a blog post.
When Base joined Optimism in 2023, it was eligible to earn up to 118 million OP tokens over six years. It's unclear how many tokens Base has claimed or what will happen to the remainder.
Optimism also received some positive news on Wednesday: Ethereum staking protocol Ether.fi announced it is moving its crypto credit card business from the Layer 2 network Scroll to OP Mainnet.
"In the coming months, approximately 70,000 active cards, 300,000 accounts, and millions in user TVL will migrate to Optimism," Optimism said in a blog post. "This will make OP Mainnet a top chain for payments."
As for Coinbase, Wang said that since Base is still using code developed by Optimism, it will continue subscribing to OP Labs' "OP Enterprise: Mission Critical" services. "If Base forks so much that it's no longer an OP Stack, then they no longer need our mission-critical support," she wrote.
