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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Blockchains (L2)

OP Mainnet

# OP Mainnet Token incentives Methodology

## 1. Overview

Token incentives measures the USD value of OP tokens distributed by Optimism as rewards and incentives to users, developers, and ecosystem participants. This metric captures the direct cost to Optimism of subsidizing network growth and adoption through token distributions. The calculation identifies legitimate incentive payments by filtering OP token transfers from official reward addresses while excluding internal treasury movements and known exploit transactions.

## 2. Data sources

- **Optimism token transfer events**: Parsed `Transfer` events for the OP token (`0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000042`) on the Optimism network, specifically transfers originating from reward distribution addresses
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: USD pricing data for the OP token used for currency conversion
- **Token metadata**: Decimal place information for the OP token to ensure proper amount representation

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Reward transfer identification

- **Purpose**: Identifies legitimate OP token incentive payments from official distribution sources
- **Logic**: Extracts OP token `Transfer` events from two specific source addresses: the main reward contract (`0x19793c7824be70ec58bb673ca42d2779d12581be`) and the Optimism Foundation address (`0x2501c477d0a35545a387aa4a3eee4292a9a8b3f0`). Excludes transfers to internal addresses including foundation treasury (`0x2501c477d0a35545a387aa4a3eee4292a9a8b3f0`), internal operational addresses (`0x0a7361e734cf3f0394b0fc4a45c74e7a4ec70940`, `0x44a2cad21c3fc84652c7675d8cdb2e871bc06cf4`, `0x1124226fb1c063186ebe1ad4eeea9cfd2b33cc94`), treasury address (`0xacf32f4e1260636cf1e3066c060c74ad52fe4e9e`), and known exploit addresses (`0x4f3a120e72c76c22ae802d129f599bfdbc31cb81`). This filtering ensures only genuine external reward distributions are captured.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for timing, `transaction_hash` for transaction identification, `token_address` confirming OP token, `from_address` identifying reward source, `to_address` as recipient, and `value` containing raw token amount

### Component B: Daily aggregation and metadata enrichment

- **Purpose**: Aggregates transfers to daily level and adds business context metadata
- **Logic**: Groups transfer events by day using timestamp truncation to day boundaries. Assigns business classification metadata including chain identifier as 'optimism', business line as 'Blockchain', market sector as 'blockchains_l2', business segment as 'blockchain', and expense type as 'OP incentives'. Maintains transaction-level detail while preparing for USD conversion.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` truncated to daily boundaries, `chain_id` as 'optimism', `reward_amount` containing token amounts, plus business classification fields

### Component C: Currency conversion and decimal correction

- **Purpose**: Converts OP token amounts to USD values with proper decimal handling
- **Logic**: Applies the convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals macro to transform raw token amounts into USD equivalents. Uses end-of-day price feeds for the OP token to ensure consistent daily valuation. Corrects for token decimal places to represent actual token quantities rather than raw contract values (OP token uses 18 decimal places).
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` converted to USD amounts with proper decimal representation

### Final aggregation

- **Combining components**: All converted incentive amounts are aggregated by day, maintaining the business metadata and chain information from the previous steps
- **Currency conversion**: USD conversion occurs using end-of-day OP token prices, ensuring consistent daily valuation across all transfers within each day
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established using timestamp truncation, with all transfers within a calendar day grouped together
- **Final calculation**: The metric represents the total USD value of OP tokens distributed as incentives on each day. The finalize_metric_token_incentives macro applies schema standardization, validates business identifiers, and fills any data gaps with zeros using a forward-fill strategy to ensure complete time series coverage. Chain availability filtering ensures only data from periods when Optimism was operational is included in the final results.

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

Value of native tokens distributed as incentives.

OP MainnetOP

Token incentives

Token incentives

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown