The native governance token for Optimism, a leading scaling solution for Ethereum, reached an all-time high Wednesday morning.
OP has increased roughly 30% in the past 24 hours and more than 330% in the past year to exchange hands at $4.12, the token’s highest level since it debuted in 2022, data from CoinGecko shows at the time of publication.
Optimism is a layer 2 blockchain network built on top of Ethereum that aims to make transactions faster and cheaper. According to L2BEAT, Optimism is the second largest layer 2 rollup with a total of $5.65 billion in value locked in its smart contracts, behind Arbitrum.
Learn more: What Is Optimism in Ethereum?
The OP token, distributed through several airdrop rounds, assists in governing Optimism Collective, the decentralized governance structure for the layer 2 blockchain. The structure is a bicameral governance system composed of the Token House and Citizens’ House to “balance short-term incentives” with longer-term goals, according to its working constitution.
Optimism Collective’s Token House, composed of all holders of OP, can vote on technical decisions and software upgrades to the layer 2 blockchain.
Read more: Ethereum Developers Consider Raising Validator Limit to 2,048 ETH
Per CoinDesk Market Index, in 2023, the growth of Optimism’s governance token has been the 8th largest behind only INJ, SOL, RAY, FET, STX, IMX and METIS.
In May 2023, Worldcoin, the decentralized identity network co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman started on the Optimism network. Roughly a month later, Optimism successfully completed its Bedrock upgrade, which aims at reducing fees and deposit times as well as improving the network’s modularity and node software performances.
