OP Mainnet batches users' transactions and submits them to Ethereum, paying a share of the transaction fees to Ethereum validators (expense).

OP Mainnet is an L2 smart contract platform for decentralized applications on Ethereum. OP Mainnet was founded by Jinglan Wang, Karl Floersch & Kevin Ho and launched in 2021.

Optimism team & investors own and govern the protocol. Optimism’s investors include Paradigm, a16z, IDEO CoLab Ventures, etc.

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OP Mainnet

# OP Mainnet Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time interval between consecutive blocks on the Optimism blockchain, calculated as a daily average and expressed in milliseconds. This metric provides insights into the network's block production consistency and performance. The calculation involves measuring time differences between consecutive blocks and aggregating these intervals by day to produce a daily average block time.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation uses the following raw data sources:

- **Optimism blockchain block data**: Block headers from the Optimism blockchain containing block numbers and timestamps for each mined block
- **Block sequencing data**: Sequential block numbers that enable ordering and pairing of consecutive blocks
- **Block timestamp data**: Precise timestamps indicating when each block was mined on the Optimism network

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract and prepare block timestamp and number data for interval calculations
- **Logic**: Retrieves `block_timestamp` and `block_number` fields from Optimism blockchain block data. Filters out the genesis block (block number 0) since it has an artificial timestamp at Unix epoch that would distort block time calculations. For incremental updates, applies date-based filtering to process only recent blocks within the lookback period.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` contains the exact time each block was mined, `block_number` provides sequential block ordering

### Component B: Consecutive block pairing
- **Purpose**: Pair each block with its immediate predecessor to enable time interval calculation
- **Logic**: Uses a LAG window function ordered by `block_number` to associate each block's timestamp with the timestamp of the previous block in sequence. This creates pairs of consecutive blocks needed for calculating time intervals. Excludes the first block since it has no predecessor.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for current block, `previous_timestamp` for the preceding block

### Component C: Block time interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate the time difference between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: Computes the timestamp difference between each block and its predecessor using millisecond precision. Truncates block timestamps to day boundaries to enable daily aggregation. Excludes records where `previous_timestamp` is null (the first block in the sequence).
- **Key fields**: `block_time` containing the millisecond interval between consecutive blocks, `timestamp` truncated to daily boundaries

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Groups block time intervals by day and calculates the average block time for each day
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this time-based metric
- **Time aggregation**: Uses daily boundaries created by timestamp truncation to group block intervals
- **Final calculation**: Applies the average function to all block time intervals within each day, producing a single daily average block time value in milliseconds. The result includes standard metadata fields identifying Optimism as a layer 2 blockchain in the blockchain business segment.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

OP MainnetOP

Block time

Block time

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