OP Labs

OP Labs is the software company behind Optimism, an Ethereum optimistic-rollup Layer 2, and grew out of the Plasma Group research collective; Optimism PBC (later OP Labs) was founded in 2019 in New York by Jinglan Wang, Karl Floersch, Ben Jones, and Kevin Ho. OP Labs builds the OP Stack, an open-source, modular blueprint for launching interoperable rollups, and the chains built on it form the Superchain — a shared network of L2s anchored by Optimism Mainnet, which for years also included Coinbase's Base. On February 18, 2026, Base left the Superchain and dropped the OP Stack — a severe blow, since Base had contributed roughly 96.5% of the Collective's gas-fee revenue, and OP fell about 28% on the news. In response, Optimism governance approved directing 50% of sequencer revenue to OP token buybacks in February 2026. In 2022 the project raised a $150 million Series B co-led by a16z and Paradigm at a $1.65 billion valuation. The protocol and its public-goods funding are stewarded by the Optimism Collective and Optimism Foundation.