The dilemma without a moat: why can't Optimism keep its base? 】 Article: Thejaswini M A Compilation: Luffy, Foresight NewsOptimism The story could have had a victorious version. In that version, OP Stack became the default infrastructure for the expansion of Ethereum. Dozens of well funded chains joined the Superchain, and the revenue flowed back to the Collective. The interoperability function was successfully launched, and the entire ecosystem continued to compound interest. From a distance, it was like a new form of the Internet: it did not belong to anyone, and everyone co governed and self sustained. This version is not a fantasy. There was a time when it seemed like it was really about to happen. The problem is that everything Optimism has done to achieve this vision also makes it impossible to protect it. OP Stack is released under the MIT open source license. The importance of this decision is almost greater than any other choice made by Optimism, so it is necessary to clarify its meaning: MIT is currently the most relaxed universal open source protocol, and anyone can access the code, develop it, modify it, commercialize it, and even fork it completely. No copyright fees, no revenue sharing, no obligations, you don't even need to say thank you. Optimism is a deliberate choice made. The logic is simple: if you want to become the default framework, you need to eliminate all reasons for not adopting it. Reduce access costs to zero, make agreements undisputed, and enable any team, company, or exchange with a development budget to launch an OP Stack chain with just one click without the need for licenses or signing any documents. It succeeded. By mid-2025, OP Stack has processed 69.9% of L2 transaction fees, and 34 chains have been launched on the mainnet. Coinbase, Uniswap, Kraken, Sony, and Worldcoin are all using it. When people talk about Ethereum scaling, they usually refer to something built on Optimism code. Optimism has won the battle of standards. Then, the largest chain it had helped build announced that it no longer needed this relationship. On February 18, 2026, Coinbase released a blog post with a carefully worded and friendly title, which is a typical style when the company announces major events without wanting to sound harsh. The Base chain will integrate code repositories, accelerate development cycles, and reduce coordination costs. The article expresses gratitude and praises cooperation. As soon as the news came out, the OP token plummeted by 28% within 48 hours, and the selling volume surged by 157%. In just a few days, the token has fallen 89.8% compared to a year ago, and as of the time of writing, it is only $0.12, while the high point in March 2024 was $4.85. OP Labs CEO Jing Wang wrote on X, 'This is a blow to short-term on chain revenue.' To understand the reason, you must understand what Superchain truly sells. OP Stack is free. The agreement makes this permanent and irrevocable. So, why would a chain be willing to share revenue with Optimism Collective? The answer to Optimism is: interoperability. By joining Superchain, your chain is not just a chain, but a part of a unified network - liquidity and users can freely flow between all member chains. Developing on one chain is equivalent to developing on all chains, achieving a 1+1>2 effect. This is its value proposition: paying 2.5% of total revenue or 15% of net profit, in return, you can get something that no single chain can build on its own. But interoperability has never been online. Optimism was originally scheduled to launch native interoperability on the mainnet in early 2025, but it did not arrive. A long-term governance representative said, 'Despite years of technological development, unfortunately, this has not been achieved.' Members are paying 'taxes,' and the products that this money should support are still at the theoretical level. Superchain actually provides only shared branding, shared governance costs, and a revenue obligation. And what is worth paying for this obligation is always' right in front of us'. Meanwhile, Base continues to grow. By January 2026, Base contributed 96.5% of the total gas fees flowing into Optimism Collective, almost all of it. The trading volume of Base is about 4 times that of OP Mainnet, the trading volume of DEX is about 144 times, and the gas fee output is 80 times. During the cooperation period, Collective received a total of approximately 14000 ETH throughout its lifecycle, of which Base contributed 8387 ETH and the monthly revenue accounted for nearly 100%. The other 33 Superchain members, although on the list, are economically insignificant. In the first half of 2025, the second most active member, World Chain, will only account for 11.5% of Superchain's total computing power, OP Mainnet itself will account for 11.4%, and Ink, Soneium, and Unichain combined will account for less than 13%. Superchain, apart from its name, has actually become an ecosystem of a chain. The alliance is real on paper, but economically it is completely a base. In any alliance, at a certain stage of development, the strongest participant will ask the obvious question: What have I gained from it? In almost every successful open source story, the same logic is playing out. MongoDB created a widely used database, released it as open source, and then watched AWS build profitable hosting services on it without paying a penny. AWS controls traffic distribution, MongoDB sets standards, and value flows to entities that control users, rather than entities that write code. MongoDB ultimately modified its protocol, while AWS forked it into OpenSearch. Elastic and Redis have also experienced the same cycle. The details are different, but the structure is completely consistent: infrastructure developers establish standards, giants with distribution capabilities adopt them, giants harvest value, and ultimately giants internalize the technology stack and leave. Optimism is the encrypted version of this story. Arbitrum understood this logic and made different choices. Orbit Chain, which is benchmarked against Superchain, adopts the Business Source protocol, and revenue sharing is based on contractual constraints rather than voluntary. When your biggest partner can leave without legal consequences, the survival of the alliance depends entirely on their willingness to stay. Arbitrum does not want to build an ecosystem based on this assumption. The official reason given by Base for leaving is technical: a unified code repository means faster development, and the goal has been raised from 3 major upgrades per year to 6; Independent control of the security committee means that no external agency can delay or prevent network decisions; Reducing dependence means that Base can keep up with Ethereum's own upgrade pace without waiting for governance processes beyond its control. Coordinating across multiple code repositories is indeed slower than controlling the technology stack on your own. But there is another reason that needs no further explanation. Morgan Stanley estimates that the Base token can bring approximately $34 billion in equity value to Coinbase and raise its target price to $404. As long as Base is still paying 15% of the net profit to the Collective of external protocols, designing a Base token with reliable value capture capability will be extremely difficult structurally. Leaving Superchain is a prerequisite, not a side effect. The two motivations point in the same direction, and Base did indeed do so. Not everything is left for Optimism, but we must honestly face the changes that have already occurred. OP Mainnet still holds $1.5 billion in TVL. On the same day that Base announced its departure, ether.fi announced that it would migrate its on chain credit card products to OP Mainnet, bringing in 70000 active cards, 300000 accounts, and over $160 million in TVL. A few weeks ago, Collective just approved a buyback plan, allocating 50% of the sorter's revenue to monthly repurchase OP. The ether.fi collaboration has brought clearer use cases for OP Mainnet in the consumer payment field. But ether.fi's annualized commission contribution is only about $13 million, while Base's profit will reach $55 million in 2025 alone. The revenue base on which the repurchase plan was based no longer exists. The unlocking of tokens by investors and contributors continues at a scale of approximately $32 million per month. Transitioning to enterprise services may be the right step. OP Labs has raised over $175 million in funding, possesses top engineering talent, and has a genuine demand for hosted OP Stack deployment. These institutions hope to launch the chain but do not want to build their own maintenance capabilities. Jing Wang positions it as a 'VNet' in the field of blockchain infrastructure, which is a reasonable analogy. This is a service business that can operate smoothly. But the service business is completely different from the network that generates compound interest agreement revenue through alliances. The valuation of OP tokens was originally set for the latter. Less than 12 hours after the blog was published, the market already understood this. Expand your perspective. What happened on February 18th is essentially not just about Optimism. For most of 2024, over 50 L2 networks are competing for users and liquidity. By the end of 2025, Base, Arbitrarum, and Optimism will handle nearly 90% of L2 transactions, with Base alone accounting for over 60%. The activity of small Rollup has decreased by 61% since June. Dencun upgrade brings a 90% cost reduction and compresses the industry wide profit margin. Base is the only L2 that will achieve profitability by 2025. The surviving chains, as well as the chains that will define this level in the coming years, may not necessarily be the most technologically advanced. They are chains with structured reasons for user retention. Chains with exchange backgrounds (Base, Ink, Mantle) rely on the distribution capabilities of the parent company's existing user base. Every Coinbase user who wants to enter the chain only needs one click to get to Base. DeFi native chains like Arbitrarum and Hyperliquid rely on liquidity that is difficult to rebuild elsewhere to maintain their position. Technology can be forked. OP Stack proves this point perfectly. What cannot be forked is Coinbase's relationship with its 100 million users, or Arbitrarum's billions of dollars in open positions. The lasting value is here, and it has almost nothing to do with which protocol you choose for your code repository. Optimism has decided to release OP Stack under a loose open source license, which is the right choice. It brought the widest adoption in the L2 framework, making Optimism the infrastructure standard for scaling the entire generation of Ethereum. Without this decision, Base may be built based on other technologies, or even not at all. But the decision that made all of this possible also made exit cost free. When Base grows large enough to have its own users, its own token roadmap, and a reason to pursue complete infrastructure sovereignty, there are no constraints in the protocol, and the promise of interoperability is not enough to leave it with a reason. Optimism won the standard war. This standard does not come with a mechanism to capture the value it creates. The token price of $0.12 is the final market price for all of this value.