What is Optimism? Is It Worth Your Time?

Optimism is a project that a lot of people are hyping about. But hype doesn’t dictate whether or not it is worth investing in. Instead, it’s based on the project’s features and its overall potential. This article will help you understand its potential so that you can decide for yourself.

What is Optimism?

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that is used on the Ethereum blockchain. 

The primary point of Optimism is that you can conduct transactions using Ethereum applications at a very low cost. Optimism causes transactions to be moved away from the blockchain and onto another blockchain that is more beneficial to them. 

As a result, the cost of gas fees decreases significantly, but the amount of labor completed increases. Additionally, all of the tools offered on Ethereum can be used by developers without extra charge thanks to Optimisms. 

The development team at Optimism claims that traders will pay ten times less in gas fees as a result of the project’s implementation. Lastly, the project’s rollups are used to combat fraud and illicit state changes in a variety of situations.

What it Brings to The Table

Simplicity

Because of the features it delivers, optimism is intended to be as simple as possible. For a safe, scalable, and flexible L2 system, optimism should have the fewest number of moving parts possible. The design of Optimism provides several important advantages over more complex L2 constructs, mostly due to its ease of implementation.

The reduction in engineering overhead allows engineers to spend more time developing new features and less time recreating old ones, which results in better product quality. Optimism prefers to leverage Ethereum programming and infrastructure that has already proven itself in the field.

Sustainability

Sustainability has an active influence on the design of Optimism in ways that are consistent with the project’s simple philosophy. 

Individuals outside of the main development team will have a more difficult time actively contributing to a codebase as the complexity of the codebase increases. By keeping their codebase as basic as possible, they can attract a larger number of contributors who will be able to assist in the long-term maintenance of the protocol.

With optimism, you’re in it for the long haul. Assurance that the platform on which their applications are built will not only remain operational but will also remain competitive over an extended time is essential for application development teams. 

At Optimism, the design process is built on the concept of long-term sustainability, rather than taking shortcuts to achieve scalability quickly. Ultimately, a scalable system is pointless unless it is supported by an ecosystem of other systems and resources.

Pragmatic Approach

When it comes down to it, practical factors dictate the creation of Optimism’s philosophy. The design philosophy of optimism prioritizes the requirements of consumers and developers above all else. 

Even though it may be less appealing, Optimism still decides to take this path knowing that the best option is frequently the most straightforward.

Optimism

Without a positive mindset, none of this is even a remote possibility. Optimism is being propelled ahead by the belief in the Ethereum goal. The core team believes that Ethereum has a bright future ahead of it.

Optimism is ultimately designed as a component of the Ethereum blockchain network. This is something that their developers keep in mind whenever they develop new features or attempt to make existing ones more user-friendly. 

Because it exists to secure the success of Ethereum, optimism has come as close to Ethereum as possible, not only for pragmatic reasons but also because it has come as close to Ethereum as feasible.

To put it simply, Optimism was created for a more “optimistic” Ethereum blockchain network. The Ethereum blockchain may be very popular but it also has a lot of problems that need solving. And this is exactly where Optimism comes into the picture. 

Does it have Potential?

To save you time, the answer is yes.

Optimism will provide consumers with faster transactions and lower fees while protecting the security of Ethereum.

In addition, it is worth noting that the amount of data that is infused impacts Optimism’s performance on Layer 1. Because of this consumers can compress as much data as they like while still benefiting from a huge and reasonably priced data layer that Optimism offers.

Optimism also expects that the qualities of the platform will attract new apps and developers to join its network of apps. As a result, there will be an increase in the number of people using the blockchain.

To summarize, Optimism is a project with the future in mind and it will attract a lot of potential users because of the multiple benefits it offers on the platform. 

Optimism Overview

Optimism Mission and Vision

Optimism is a Public Benefit Company, which means that it is a for-profit corporation that is supposed to balance the financial interests of its owners with the greatest interests of their community.

Instead of simply creating software to scale Ethereum technology, they are also scaling Ethereum values by laying the basis for highly significant projects that now lack a sustainable economic model.

Through the development of infrastructure that fosters the growth and long-term sustainability of public goods, optimism promises to defend Ethereum’s values. This is the mission and vision of the project.

Optimism Features

Optimistic Rollups

Optimism is an “Optimistic Rollup”. This means that it’s a blockchain that is dependent on the security of a “parent” blockchain to maintain its security. The Ethereum blockchain serves as the foundation for Optimism making it its “parent” blockchain.

Optimistic Rollups can take advantage of the consensus processes that are already in place on their parent chains, such as Proof of Work and Proof of stake, to achieve their goals. 

Data Availability

On the Ethereum blockchain, the Canonical Transaction Chain (CTC ) is a specific smart contract that stores all Optimism blocks. The “official history” of all transactions in the rollup chain is represented by the CTC which is an append-only log. 

Being an append-only log means that it will prevent tampering and it makes the data more secure. 

A new Ethereum transaction cannot change the current list of blocks in the CTC’s code because it is already in use. Breaking this guarantee is possible by reorganizing the Ethereum blockchain and altering the sequence in which earlier Ethereum transactions appear on the blockchain in the first place. This makes it more secure in the process.

Another thing worth noting is that the Optimism mainnet will not be affected by a block restructuring of up to 50 Ethereum blocks in size. If Reorganization occurs in Ethereum, Optimism will undergo reorganization as well.

Ethereum’s fundamental security purpose is, of course, to prevent massive block reorganizations of this sort from occurring. This means that if the Ethereum consensus system is secure, then optimism will be protected against big block reorganizations as well as improving data availability in the process.

Optimisms block storage will help protect it from large-scale restructuring which makes things easier for users in the long run as well as providing new features like bridging between layers which will be explained down below.  

Another benefit of the CTC is that it will help improve data availability as well. 

Convenient Bridging Between Layers

Optimism is intended to allow users to transmit arbitrary messages between Optimism and Ethereum smart contracts. This enables the transfer of assets, such as ERC20 tokens, across the two blockchain networks.

With this capability in the Standard bridge, users can deposit assets like ERC20 tokens and ETH from Ethereum to Optimism while also withdrawing the same assets from Optimism and returning them to Ethereum as well.

To transfer messages from Ethereum to Optimism, users only need to trigger the CTC contract on Ethereum, which will then produce a new block on the Optimism block.

Fault Proof

Optimism’s rollup commitments that are published on the Ethereum blockchain don’t need validation or require proof. The reason for this is because these commitments are instead undergoing a process called the “challenge window”.

If a proposed commitment is unchallenged for a set amount ot time, the committee will be considered final. If it does get challenged, the process can be invalidated by using the “fault-proof” process and be replaced by another commitment.

The fault-proof process makes use of verifiers to “verify” that the data in the transaction is correct. Verifiers can be anyone using Optimism and they are rewarded for taking part in the verification process.

This process makes it harder for frauds with malicious intent to fake their transactions. Additionally, It’s also more efficient compared to how Ethereum validates transactions as well making things more efficient for everyone. 

Optimism Team

Jinglan Wang – Co-Founder and CEO

A long-time member of the Ethereum community, Jinglan is currently working with the Optimism (previously Plasma Group) team. Formerly, she held positions at Handshake, Nasdaq, and the MIT Bitcoin Club. She also served as the Executive Director of the Blockchain Education Network for some time during her career.

Karl Floersch – Co-Founder

Karl Floersch is an Ethereum Developer who is now working on layer-2 solutions for the Ethereum blockchain platform. After that, Karl takes us through the evolution of Plasma and Casper, and finally the development of Optimistic Roll-ups.

Kevin Ho – Co-Founder

Kevin completed the Digital Media Design program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in computer science with a concentration in computer graphics and fine arts. He graduated in May 2018 with honors. Algorithms, data structures, C++, Javascript, Java, and marketing are just a few of the courses he has taken that are relevant. 

During his time in Pennsylvania, He started a digital marketing firm with monthly revenue of $5,000 and developed Livedrop, a concert recommendations engine that was later acquired by Ticketmaster, among other things. 

He is currently spending his full time learning about and distributing information on the exciting new topic of Cryptoeconomics, which he has discovered through his research.

Optimism Backers and Investors

Optimism currently has 3 investors in total, Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz for its recent Series B funding round giving it a valuation of 1.65 billion. Another investor is IDEO CoLab Ventures which invested in the project’s Seed Round back in 2020.

Conclusion

Optimism brings a lot of features and solves a lot of problems that Ethereum once had. The project has a lot of potential considering it helps make Ethereum scalable and simplifies a lot of complicated processes. It doesn’t have a lot of investors at the moment but it does have a valuation of 1.65 billion.

* We hope this information will help you in your investment process, but this is not investment advice. Every investment carries risk, especially in this industry, so DYOR before making a decision.