Optimism launches 7th Retro Funding Round with 16M OP tokens for onchain builders
Optimism Weekly Overview - February 11, 2025
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Superchain Ecosystem Numbers
DeFi total value locked (TVL) across Superchain: $4.1B (+7.9%)
Assets onchain: $18.3B (-5.18%)
Daily average transaction volume: 11.3M (-5.84%)
Base: 7.9M (-7.06%)
OP Mainnet: 1.0M (-16.67%)
Soneium: 675.0K (+48.88%)
World: 656.4K (-0.09%)
Lisk: 594.4K (+0.75%)
Revenue-generating deployers on:
Zora: 110 (-2.65%)
OP Mainnet: 1218 (+8.07%)
Superchain transaction fee total savings vs L1s:
OP Mainnet: 4,087 ETH
Base: 21,849 ETH
Zora: 109 ETH
Compared to Ethereum, L2 Superchain users saved a total of 26K ETH, or $69.5M on txn fees this week.
The percentages and metrics are pulled from the Superchain Health Dashboard and are calculated from its change over a 7-day time frame, unless noted otherwise.
Spotlight on Optimism’s Superchain
Highlighting some of the biggest updates on Optimism’s Superchain this week.
🔴What’s happening: Optimism has launched its seventh Retro Funding program with 8 million OP for “Dev Tooling,” with another 8 million OP allocated for “Onchain Builders.” The initiative goes live on Wednesday.
🔴Why it matters: Retro Funding is the economic engine of the Optimism Collective enabling builders and projects to receive rewards for their contributions to Optimism by focusing on past impact rather than future speculation. The Citizens' House, a governance mechanism within the Optimism Collective, evaluates projects based on measurable metrics, so it’s a merit-based distribution.
In 2024, Retro Funding distributed 20.4M OP through 3 rounds to 374 projects. Recipients included onchain builders deploying contracts to the Superchain, core contributors to Ethereum and the OP Stack, and developers of open source tooling and governance infrastructure.
The Dev Tooling mission is a program that rewards builders creating open-source software like libraries, compilers, and debuggers that supports Superchain development. Separately, the Onchain Builders program will help support projects enabling cross-chain asset transfers across OP Chains. The Onchain Builders program will reward projects based on the growth in Superchain adoption as well as TVL and interoperability support. Rewards will be determined by human-guided evaluations coupled with measurable metrics including builder adoption rates, tool importance in application development, and features supporting Superchain interoperability. All evaluations use data from GitHub and other onchain sources.
Dev Tooling applications are now live and Onchain Builders applications will be live on February 12. Both programs will be open until July 30.
🔴What it means for the broader ecosystem: Since 2022, Optimism has distributed 60,815,042 OP tokens, worth about $67.5 million, through Retro Funding. The program aims to follow Optimism's core principle that "impact = profit," rewarding past contributions that have already contributed to the ecosystem.
The Retro Funding method promotes innovative and successful projects by creating incentive structures that help continuously grow the Superchain and broader Ethereum ecosystem. This program allows builders to focus on development of key infrastructure and tools like cross-chain interoperability through the Superchain as well as the creation of more dApps for DeFi, gaming, AI and more.
In the future, the Optimism Foundation also plans to create an OP Stack program focused on supporting “Ethereum Core Development” in Season 8, according to an Optimism Governance post.
What’s poppin’ on the Superchain
Highlighting the most weekly active addresses by chain:
Base: 5.35M
OP Mainnet: 410.85K
World Chain: 113.15K
Zora: 54.83K
Mode Network: 12.1K
Uniswap’s Unichain launched its mainnet with lower fees, cross-chain liquidity and a priority for decentralization
Read the proposal to deploy Aave V3 on Soneium
World has hit 11M Orb-verified humans on World Network
Learn about Celo Foundation’s “user-centric” AI initiative
And watch how to launch tokens on Celo using Gaia AI agent framework
From the Optimism Collective
Highlighting the companies, communities and citizens bound to the Optimism Collective.
ICYM: Listen to Ethereum Foundation’s X Space on “rollups, scaling, and pragmatic collaboration” with Optimism and other major L2s
Watch OP Labs Engineer Hamdi Allam explain cross-chain composability on the Superchain
Check out the Base flywheel to learn how creators can help grow the ecosystem
For more Optimism Collective weekly updates, look here.
Get into the OP Stack
Want to dive into the ecosystem full-time? Find the latest job postings here or get involved at an event below.
Going to ETHDenver? Join the Superchain community at Superchain Space hosted by Superchain.Eco in collaboration with the Optimism Foundation
Stop by Ink’s five-day hacker house at ETHDenver and visit the House of Ink, starting on Feb. 22
Check out Soneium Conquest to participate in the ecosystem’s airdrops, NFTs, gaming and more
Going to Consensus? Stop by the Superchain Asia Gathering to connect with others in Hong Kong on Feb. 20
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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.