Optimism Foundation outlines a 118M OP grant to Coinbase-backed Base

The Optimism Foundation and Coinbase-backed layer-2 platform Base eye shared governance of OP Chains.
Base will receive 118 million OP token spread over six years.

The Optimism Foundation and Base, a Layer 2 on the OP Stack, are looking to cooperate further in the quest to enhance security, scalability and decentralisation in the Optimism Collective – the Superchain.   

For this, the Optimism Foundation has outlined a proposal that could see Coinbase-backed Base receive a grant totaling 118 million OP tokens.

“This grant is meant to retroactively reward Base’s contributions thus far to scaling Ethereum and the OP Stack, ensure Base’s long term alignment and commitment to the ecosystem, and critically, give Base a meaningful voice in the system of Optimism Governance, to which they’ve entrusted the future of their chain,” the announcement read.

Optimism’s revenue and governance proposal also details a commitment that the Base team has to make with regard to distributing the greater of either 2.5% of its sequencer revenue or 15% of net on-chain profits, to Optimism Collective. The 118 million OP tokens will be spread over six years and come with a cap of 9% on votable supply.

Base and Optimism to share upgrades

The move to agree on a Base/Optimism Foundation collaboration comes after last month’s “Law of Chains” proposal that seeks to transition Optimism governance from focusing on just the OP Mainnet to all chains on OP Stack. This is what’s dubbed the Superchain.

The Foundation plans to have a governance vote on the transition in place in early 2024. On what happens next, it noted:

“Base and OP Mainnet will share upgrades, so the chains’ blockspace remains compatible, homogenous, and eventually interoperable in a Superchain future.  How those upgrades evolve is up to Optimism Governance.”

If the “Law of Chains” is ratified, some of the key steps to be executed will include upgrades across Base, the OP Mainnet, and other chains on OP Stack. The teams will also work on a decentralised Security Council and “Pessimism,” a cybersecurity monitoring tool.

Base launched on August 9 and is seeing growing traction with total value locked (TVL) up 9% in the past week to $183 million. DeFiLlama data shows Optimism currently ranks sixth among top chains with over $715 million in TVL.