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 Earnings Methodology

## 1. Overview

Optimism earnings represents the net profit of the Optimism L2 blockchain, calculated as total revenue minus total expenses. This metric answers the fundamental business question: "How profitable is Optimism's operation as a Layer 2 scaling solution?" The calculation follows standard accounting principles where earnings = revenue - expenses, with revenue coming from transaction fees and fee-sharing arrangements, and expenses including L1 settlement costs and token-based user incentives.

## 2. Data sources

The earnings calculation draws from several blockchain data sources and external feeds:

- **Optimism transaction records**: Complete transaction history including gas usage, fees, and L1 cost components for all transactions on the Optimism network
- **Base blockchain fee distribution events**: Parsed `FeeDisburser_FeesDisbursed` events from Base chain showing Optimism's revenue share from Base operations
- **Ethereum transaction records**: Historical transaction data for L1 settlement costs, including both pre-Bedrock and post-Bedrock settlement mechanisms  
- **Optimism legacy event logs**: Pre-Bedrock `StateCommitmentChain_StateBatchAppended` and `CanonicalTransactionChain_SequencerBatchAppended` events for historical settlement tracking
- **Optimism token transfer events**: Parsed `Transfer` events for OP token showing reward distributions and incentive programs
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Daily token price data for converting ETH and OP amounts to USD values
- **Address allowlists**: Curated lists of internal foundation addresses to exclude from incentive calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Revenue from transaction fees
- **Purpose**: Calculate total fee revenue from Optimism users, including both L2 execution fees and L1 data availability fees passed through to users
- **Logic**: Extract all Optimism transactions and calculate two fee components. For L2 execution fees, multiply `gas_used_amount` by `gas_price` and divide by 10^18 to convert from wei to ETH. For L1 data availability fees, use the `l1_fee_amount` field directly divided by 10^18. Sum both components for total transaction fees. Additionally, include Optimism's revenue share from Base chain operations by extracting the `paidToOptimism` amount from Base `FeesDisbursed` events, divided by 10^18
- **Key fields**: `gas_used_amount`, `gas_price`, `l1_fee_amount`, `paidToOptimism`

### Component B: Revenue from Base fee sharing  
- **Purpose**: Calculate Optimism's portion of fees generated by the Base blockchain
- **Logic**: Process Base chain `FeeDisburser_FeesDisbursed` events to extract the `paidToOptimism` field, which represents Optimism's share of Base transaction fees. Convert from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18. This represents additional revenue from Optimism's relationship with Base as part of the Superchain ecosystem
- **Key fields**: `paidToOptimism`, `totalFeesDisbursed`

### Component C: L1 settlement expenses
- **Purpose**: Calculate the actual cost Optimism pays to settle transactions and state updates on Ethereum mainnet
- **Logic**: Handle two distinct periods. For pre-Bedrock (before June 6, 2023), identify settlement transactions using allowlisted transaction hashes from `StateCommitmentChain_StateBatchAppended` and `CanonicalTransactionChain_SequencerBatchAppended` events, then calculate gas costs as `receipt_gas_used` × `receipt_effective_gas_price` ÷ 10^18. For post-Bedrock, identify direct settlement transactions from the sequencer address `0x6887246668a3b87f54deb3b94ba47a6f63f32985` to the null address `0xff00000000000000000000000000000000000010`, and state root proposal transactions from `0x473300df21d047806a082244b417f96b32f13a33` to the L2OutputOracle `0xdfe97868233d1aa22e815a266982f2cf17685a27`
- **Key fields**: `receipt_gas_used`, `receipt_effective_gas_price`, `from_address`, `to_address`

### Component D: Token incentive expenses
- **Purpose**: Calculate the USD value of OP tokens distributed as incentives to users and ecosystem participants
- **Logic**: Extract OP token transfer events from two key distribution addresses: the main reward address `0x19793c7824be70ec58bb673ca42d2779d12581be` and the foundation address `0x2501c477d0a35545a387aa4a3eee4292a9a8b3f0`. Include only transfers of the OP token `0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000042` to external recipients, excluding transfers to internal foundation addresses, treasury addresses, and known exploiter addresses. The `value` field represents the raw token amount requiring decimal correction
- **Key fields**: `from_address`, `to_address`, `token_address`, `value`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Sum transaction fee revenue and Base fee sharing revenue for total revenue. Sum L1 settlement costs and token incentive expenses for total expenses
- **Currency conversion**: Convert all ETH amounts to USD using end-of-day price feeds via the `convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals` macro. Apply decimal corrections for OP token amounts (divide by 10^18) but not for ETH amounts already converted
- **Time aggregation**: Truncate all timestamps to daily boundaries and aggregate all components by day using sum aggregation
- **Final calculation**: Subtract total daily expenses from total daily revenue to arrive at daily earnings in USD. Apply the `fill_zeros` strategy to ensure continuous daily data with zero values for days with no activity

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

Net profit (also profits, net income, profitability) — revenue remaining after subtracting expenses.

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