BInance Research Report: OP Stack Ecosystem and Innovation

Original title: "The OP Stack: What's New?" Original source: BInance Research Original translation: Plain Blockchain
The era of L2 Rollup is coming, and activity on Ethereum L2 has reached an all-time high.  L2’s average transactions per second (“TPS”) exceeded Ethereum starting in late 2022.
Many of the latest wave of L2 launches use OP Stack, an open source software development stack that supports Ethereum L2, OP Mainnet, and new players such as Base and Zora Network. Optimism envisions combining these Rollups with many Rollups in the future to form a decentralized L2 chain network, or superchain.
This article delves into the OP Stack and hyperchain theory, then explores the evolving OP Stack ecosystem, including Base, Zora Network, DeBank Chain, etc. It also explores the infrastructure solutions that make this range of OP Stack chains accessible to developers and builders of all backgrounds.
01. About Optimism
Optimism is the company behind OP Mainnet, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (“EVM”)-like Optimism Rollup that has been running since 2021 and is one of the leading Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. As of the time of writing this report, OP Mainnet has a total locked value (“TVL”) of over $2.6 billion and holds the second largest market cap position among all Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, with a market share of over 25%.
In October 2022, Optimism introduced the OP Stack, a "highly scalable, highly interoperable, modular open source blueprint of various types." It also introduced the concept of "superchain", referring to a highly integrated and unified Layer 2 blockchain group built on the OP Stack. The next major development is the migration of their L2 Rollup to Bedrock.
A brief timeline of Optimism’s development so far
OP Stack is a standardized, shared, and open-source development that supports the OP Mainnet. OP Stack consists of various software components that build Optimism's L2 Rollup for creating shared, interoperable, and collaborative L2 blockchain networks. OP Stack aims to simplify the construction of L2 blockchains, similar to a "supermarket for building L2", allowing builders to easily modify or create modules to meet their specific needs.
Builders can modify existing modules or create new modules to suit their needs, and OP Stack deconstructs and packages different building L2 components into independent modules. Ultimately, Optimism expects highly compatible L2s, called OP chains, which will form part of a super chain.
The Superchain Theory is Optimism's vision to upgrade its ecosystem into a superchain. Superchains are conceived as a decentralized network of L2 chains (OP chains) that share security, communication layers, and an open source technology stack (OP stack). These chains will be standardized and used as interchangeable resources to enhance chain interoperability.
This standardization will enable builders to create applications that target the entire Hyperchain, not just applications that run on the underlying chain. It should be noted that the Hyperchain is still a concept and is being continuously improved.
Super chain diagram
The growing OP Stack ecosystem
We have already seen many Rollups based on OP Stack when Bedrock is released in June 2023. Next, we will take a closer look at some of these star projects and major infrastructure projects.
Taking a quick look at the table below, we notice that Base is way ahead. In fact, Base’s cumulative unique addresses are even higher than OP Mainnet. Base’s Onchain Summer and integration with Coinbase for access to its user base are likely some of the key reasons for these relatively high numbers.
Please note that only OP Mainnet, Base, Zora Network, and Public Products Network are in mainnet, while the remaining three projects we cover are still in testing.
(1) Projects worth noting
Base
Base was one of the first OP Stack L2s announced (initially in February 2023) and launched their public mainnet on August 9th. Base is a general purpose L2 and the most popular OP Stack chain after the OP Mainnet.
Onchain Summer was a month-long launch event that coincided with the launch of Base, attracting multiple partners, including Coca-Cola, to launch NFT Mints. The event attracted over 268,000 unique wallets from 75 unique collections, generating over 700,000 Mints. The close connection with Coinbase has enabled Base to have multiple integrations, providing an easy onramp for Coinbase users. Base has also launched over 100 dApps, and its ecosystem continues to grow.
Additionally, friend.tech is the much-watched SocialFi platform that allows users to trade tokenized “keys” and has attracted a significant amount of users and transaction volume. However, it is still in beta, and future growth may require attracting non-crypto and Web2 users.
After an initial rush in mid-August, daily transactions on friend.tech slowed noticeably until picking up steam again in recent weeks.
The Base Ecosystem Fund is led by Coinbase Ventures and focuses on supporting early-stage projects, including DeFi, Fiat on/off-ramp, and creator platforms. In addition, the Base team released Pessimism, an open source monitoring system for enhancing the security of OP Stack and other EVM-compatible chains, focusing on the detection and security risk mitigation of protocol threats.
Since launching mainnet in early August, Base’s user metrics have grown significantly throughout September
Based on the cooperation between Optimism and Base, they reached an economic agreement that Base will donate 2.5% of the total sequencer revenue or 15% of the net profit to Optimism, and have the opportunity to win up to $118 million in OP Tokens in the next six years. Although not explicitly announced, other OP Stack chains may also have similar revenue sharing agreements with Optimism, which shows the importance of joint contributions to the collective infrastructure of the super chain.
Zora Network
Zora Network is a decentralized, permissionless protocol that allows anyone to buy, sell, and create NFTs. In addition, they launched their own OP Stack Layer 2 network to support users and reduce platform costs.
They launched their mainnet on June 21, 2022, providing a better user experience for NFT transactions, as the cost of creating an NFT is less than $0.5, and many free Mint options are available. Compared to Ethereum, OP Stack's inter-block time is only 2 seconds, allowing Zora Network's transactions to be confirmed within seconds.
In addition, Zora Network has successfully completed three rounds of financing, raising a total of $60 million, including a $50 million round led by Haun Ventures in 2022, which valued the company at $600 million. These funds will help drive the development and growth of Zora Network in the NFT field.
Zora user metrics have been growing steadily since late July
Public Goods Network
The Public Goods Network (PGN) is a layer 2 protocol designed to support public goods. Public goods are non-excludable and non-rival products or services, such as parks, libraries, and road infrastructure, and in the digital realm can include open source software, permissionless data, and artificial intelligence models. The development of PGN is led by Gitcoin and SuperModular, with support from multiple public goods advocates, forming the Public Goods Alliance, which is responsible for the management and organization of PGN.
How PGN works PGN's documents indicate that the vast majority of net sorting fees will be used to support public goods projects, so as activity on L2 increases, funds for public welfare projects will also increase. PGN's goal is to attract all types of dApps to be deployed on its L2, not just public goods related projects. PGN plans to evaluate its fees and allocate them to public goods projects in the six months before January 2024, and more details will be announced in the coming weeks.
In addition, PGN also plans to utilize Contract Guaranteed Revenue (CSR) after October 2023, which will allow developers to charge a certain percentage of the transaction fees generated by their contracts and support them in creating a sustainable business model. CSR may become part of the wider L2 network, and there is even an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) that proposes the introduction of CSR on the EVM's L2.
PGN's user metrics grew steadily in August. Although new accounts slowed in September, transactions continued to climb.
Mode
Mode is positioned to support high-growth L2 networks and empower users and developers to build world-class applications and expand the ecosystem by directly rewarding them. Revenue sharing incentives play a key role in achieving this goal.
Running an L2 network requires maintaining a sequencer, which is responsible for sorting, processing, and delivering L2 transactions to the L1 main chain. Typically, transaction fees paid by users go to the DAO or the company that operates the sequencer. Mode aims to distribute these sorting fees to the developers and users of the network, rather than to companies.
Developers building on Mode will receive a portion of Mode's sequencer revenue, based on the transaction fees collected on the contracts they deploy. These fees are paid in USD and settled every two weeks. This allows developers to be directly rewarded for their work, helping to build predictable and scalable Web3 business models.
Mode encourages users, developers, and protocols to refer new members to it in order to share a portion of transaction fee revenue. They also provide support to enable developers to build applications and provide integrated development tools. Mode is developing a developer dashboard to provide key metrics and insights to help developers scale more easily. They also plan to integrate multiple external tools and services to help developers build sustainable businesses. Finally, Mode takes a minimal approach to governance, requiring the DAO to vote on only a few key issues, including deciding how sorting fee revenue is distributed.
Mode is approaching 4 million transactions with over 36,000 unique accounts
Mode is currently in public testnet and is expected to last until the end of September. The mainnet is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2023.
DeBank
DeBank is a Web3 portfolio tracking protocol that offers a variety of products including a portfolio tracking system, social networking services, and NFTs. DeBank Chain is their testnet for the OP Stack-based L2 chain, which is expected to be launched in 2024.
The core goal of DeBank Chain is to reduce the transaction costs of user interactions within the DeBank ecosystem. Through modifications to the consensus mechanism, the gas cost of individual transactions has been successfully reduced to better meet the needs of high-frequency social interactions. In addition, DeBank Chain also has a directly built-in account abstraction function, while also generating protocol revenue. Since the launch of the testnet on August 11, DeBank Chain has recorded more than 2.1 million transactions covering more than 50,000 unique wallet addresses. In addition, DeBank has attracted more than 250,000 registered users.
Ancient8 和 Ancient8 Chain
Ancient8 has been operating as a gaming guild and in partnership with over 100 games, aims to help gamers enter the Web3 world. They introduced Ancient8 Chain, a gaming-focused Ethereum L2 series. The testnet of the chain was launched on September 15. Ancient8's vision is to build a complete gaming ecosystem, including NFT sales, gaming community building, gaming identity and credential creation, and project marketing. They also set up the Ancient8 Collective, which consists of 8 core partners to jointly build the Ancient8 chain ecosystem. This project has raised $10 million in financing.
Although the Ancient8 Chain testnet has only been launched for a few days, it has already recorded more than 2 million transactions involving nearly 5,000 unique accounts. These statistics demonstrate the popularity and growth momentum of Ancient8 Chain in the Web3 gaming space.
The testnet of ancient 8 Chain is still in its early stages.
(2) Infrastructure
Conduit
Conduit is a rollup-as-a-service ("RaaS") platform that allows developers to easily launch their own OP Stack rollups. The Conduit team operates and maintains rollups so that developers can focus on building products instead of dealing with infrastructure.
Since the mainnet launch in March 2023, many different OP Stack chains, including Zora Network, Public Products Network, Ancient8 Chain, and Mode, have chosen to work with Conduit to launch their products.
Conduit is a solution that helps easily launch and manage OP Stack L2 Rollup. Developers can create their own L2 in minutes, including block browsers, transaction trackers, and auto-scaling RPCs. In addition, Conduit automatically updates each partner's L2, integrates with the Optimism superchain, and uses part of the fees to support the Optimism charity fund.
Conduit’s integrations allow partners to connect to other infrastructure projects like Zora Network, Axelar, and more, enhancing Conduit’s integrated infrastructure and making it easier for rollups to expand their user base.
Conduit has raised $7 million in seed funding led by Paradigm.
AltLayer
AltLayer is a RaaS protocol that allows developers to launch Optimism Rollup. It supports multiple chains and multiple virtual machine worlds, including EVM, WASM, Solana VM, and Move VM. Unlike Conduit, AltLayer supports a variety of different software development platforms. AltLayer is currently in the testnet
AltLayer’s products include a no-code dashboard that allows users to create custom L2 Rollups in minutes, and a Rollup SDK for developers who want to integrate Rollup services directly into their own products. AltLayer also provides a shared sequencer set that enables cross-chain atomic transactions and messaging with other L2s launched with AltLayer.
AltLayer provides a core network called the beacon layer as an intermediate layer between the execution layer and the data availability layer of L2. The beacon layer supports a variety of summary SDKs, data availability solutions, sequence sets, and interoperability platforms, increasing the flexibility and interoperability of Rollup.
Flash Layers are one-off application-specific Rollups that are useful for high-traffic activities like NFT Mints, mini-games, etc. AltLayer also offers standard Optimism Rollups as part of its platform, which are more suitable for long-term applications like GameFi and SocialFi.
AltLayer raised $7.2 million in seed funding in 2022, led by Polychain Capital.
AltLayer's Universal Rollup OP Stack supports multiple protocols
summary
We are witnessing a proliferation of various computing stack chains, including general-purpose L2s such as Base and Mode, as well as specialized chains such as Zora Network, DeBank Chain, and Ancient8 Chian.
New features like Conduit integration are simplifying the deployment and scaling of OP Stack Rollups, opening the way for more L2 Rollups based on the Stack. Conduit combined with the uniqueness of the OP Stack makes it an interesting development whether the ecosystem will grow using dedicated RaaS providers compared to competing L2/L3 frameworks like Arbitrum’s Orbit or zkSync’s ZK Stack.
Ethereum Rollup indicators continue to refresh historical records, and more and more dApps decide to deploy on L2 instead of L1. The era of L2 rollup is coming. EIP-4844, Proto-Danksharding, is expected to significantly reduce L2 Rollup fees and increase its competitiveness. The high L2 usage rate, the convenient deployment of infrastructure such as OP Stack and Conduit, and the prospects of EIP-4844 will further promote the development of L2. We will wait and see how it develops in the future.