optimism

EtherFi announced that the existing lending infrastructure of EtherFi Cash can no longer meet development needs. A dedicated Aave V4 instance is currently being deployed on the Optimism chain to support the credit card backend.EtherFi Cash currently has an active loan amount of 22 million USD, and it is expected that the lending capacity will reach 500 million USD by 2027. There are already 70,000 cardholders using cryptocurrency for consumption without the need to sell their cryptocurrency.

According to on-chain data, Optimism has not conducted any buybacks after completing the second and third rounds of monthly community buybacks in March and April. In March, 367.905 ETH was used to buy back 6.951453 million OP, and in April, 50.16 ETH was used to buy back 0.925654 million OP. As of now, a total of 9.451924 million OP has been repurchased.

According to The Block, research firm Bernstein reaffirmed its "Outperform" rating and maintained a target price of $140 after Circle announced its Q2 2026 financial results, believing that the company's latest performance constitutes a "reverse validation" of the market's bearish views. Bernstein analysts stated that the market currently underestimates USDC's long-term growth potential and Circle's advantages in distribution channels, liquidity, and regulatory compliance, due to two major core concerns regarding Circle—intensifying competition in stablecoins and changes in the interest rate environment that may affect reserve income.Investors may not have fully accounted for the future revenue opportunities from transaction fees, partner ecosystems, and the Arc blockchain that Circle could generate. The firm specifically pointed out that several infrastructure initiatives recently advanced by Circle, including obtaining a national trust bank license in the U.S., expanding the Circle Payments Network, and the planned launch of the Arc public chain mainnet on September 16, could all become future growth drivers. Additionally, Bernstein noted that Circle has raised its guidance for other revenues and profit margins after deducting distribution costs for 2026, expecting to confirm approximately $180 million in Arc token presale revenue.Analysts believe that future staking yields, gas fees, and ecosystem partnership revenues from Arc have not been fully reflected in current valuation expectations. As of the end of Q2, the circulating supply of USDC was $73.3 billion, a decrease of 5% from the previous quarter but an increase of 19% year-over-year. Bernstein believes that Circle is shifting from a purely crypto trading infrastructure to payments, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and broader financial infrastructure, which will drive USDC into the next phase of growth. Circle's stock closed at $63.28 on Wednesday, and Bernstein's target price of $140 implies a potential upside of about 121%.

The Optimism Foundation released its fifth annual budget update and outlook (from May 2026 to April 2027). According to the foundation's forecast, the circulating supply of OP will increase from the current approximately 2.161 billion to about 2.504 billion, accounting for 58.3% of the total supply, meaning that approximately 343 million OP will enter circulation during this period.By category, it is expected that the ecological fund will add 200 million in circulation, early core contributors 47.6 million, investors 15.3 million, governance fund 10 million, and both airdrops and Retro Funding will be zero. The foundation stated that the relevant tokens all come from the initial allocation framework and no new token allocation has been requested; this update is solely for the purpose of increasing transparency.Token deployment will continue to focus on the two strategic goals of OP mainnet growth and acquiring OP Enterprise corporate clients. Looking back at the fourth year, Optimism committed approximately 150 million OP in new expenditures, a decrease of about one-third compared to the third year; OP Enterprise went live in January 2026, with early clients including Bitpanda, Ink, Dunamu, and Ether.fi; the monthly transaction volume on the OP mainnet grew by over 60% during this period; the governance layer has approved a 12-month buyback plan that will use up to 50% of Superchain revenue for monthly OP buybacks, and over 9 million have been repurchased so far.

South Korean fintech company Toss announced a partnership with Optimism and Sunnyside Labs to jointly explore a stablecoin pegged to the Korean won.In the coming months, the three parties will conduct a proof of concept (PoC) test to assess the feasibility of building compliant blockchain digital financial infrastructure based on the OP Stack, providing technical validation for applications related to the Korean won stablecoin.

Curve Finance announced that its lending product LlamaLend V2 has officially launched on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Optimism. Users can engage in borrowing, lending, or circular leverage operations in the isolated market based on the Curve LLAMMA mechanism. It is reported that this upgrade will open a new market and distribute OP rewards to eligible users through Merkl.

According to The Block, Curve Finance has launched the lending protocol Llamalend v2 on Optimism as the first phase of its major upgrade, with plans to deploy it to the Ethereum mainnet in the second half of this year.Llamalend v2 removes the restriction of only supporting crvUSD, allowing for almost any collateral to be combined with lending assets, and introduces LlamaRisk as the market auditor responsible for evaluating new collateral and managing the market lifecycle.Users can use Curve LP tokens as collateral, allowing them to lend funds while maintaining market-making exposure, thereby improving capital efficiency. The launch on Optimism received a subsidy of 250,000 OP (approximately $50,000) provided by the Optimism Foundation, which will be used for liquidity and activity incentives over the next two months. Initially, the lending limit will be zero, only allowing for lending, and the lending limit will be determined through a seven-day DAO vote, with full functionality expected to gradually open from June 16.

According to official news from Optimism, the OP mainnet has adjusted its transaction sorting rules for the first time starting today. For many years, the sorter only used the "highest priority Gas fee first" mechanism, and now a new priority sorting option based on staking has been added.This experiment will last for four weeks (until June 23) and was approved by the Optimism governance body earlier this month, allowing users to participate voluntarily. The participation condition is to stake no less than 100,000 OP to the PolicyEngine Staking contract.The experiment will be conducted in two phases: the first phase (Week 1) will use FIFO (first in, first out) sorting, and exceeding the minimum staking amount will not affect priority; the second phase (Weeks 2-4) will change to a priority Gas multiplier mechanism weighted by staking duration, where the longer the staking time, the higher the priority.The transaction sorting rules for users who do not participate in the experiment will remain unchanged, and the PGA mechanism will continue to operate as usual.

The DeFi lending protocol Alchemix announced the completion of its cross-chain infrastructure update. The old alUSD / alETH cross-chain bridge on Optimism and Arbitrum has officially been taken offline and replaced with a new cross-chain bridge compatible with v3 alchemist.Alchemix disclosed that it has synchronized the DVN (cross-chain transaction validation) configuration, maintaining a 2/3 multi-signature confirmation mechanism for cross-chain transactions, while introducing Deutsche Telekom as a validation service provider to enhance the reliability of the cross-chain validation infrastructure.

According to analyst Alicharts, the estimated leverage ratio of Bitcoin on major futures exchanges has risen to about 0.26, the highest level in nearly a year, surpassing the peak in October 2025, reflecting a significant increase in traders' risk appetite.Alicharts stated that this data indicates investors are using leverage extensively and are optimistic about the continuation of Bitcoin's upward trend, showing the market's optimistic expectations for the next wave of market movements.

Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that the financial disclosures of Federal Reserve Chair nominee Waller show that he holds early-stage investments through employment-related investment vehicles, covering a wide range of areas, including some crypto infrastructure projects. The projects involved include: Compound (decentralized lending protocol), Optimism and Blast (Ethereum Layer 2 network), as well as Solana, in addition to trading infrastructure, crypto investment firms, and platforms in various fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology. These holdings appear to be relatively small, with poor liquidity, and have not generated reportable income, indicating a preference for indirect venture capital-style exposure rather than direct, tradable liquid assets.

Due to the migration of the top decentralized application Ether.fi to Optimism, the Ethereum Layer-2 network Scroll has experienced a significant loss of funds, resulting in a total value locked (TVL) decrease of approximately $160 million and an annual fee loss of about $13 million.Scroll stated that it will propose a plan to dissolve the decentralized security committee and reduce DAO members to lower operational costs, with network control being handed over to the internal team. Additionally, Scroll briefly raised network gas fees by 1,280 times after the protocol migration, causing users to pay over $50,000 in extra fees, but it has since returned to normal. After this adjustment, Scroll's TVL has dropped to approximately $23 million. The official statement claims that all contract changes will remain transparent and verifiable on-chain.

The infrastructure developer behind Optimism, OP Labs, announced the layoff of 20 employees, accounting for approximately 19.6% of the total team. Jing Wang, co-founder of Optimism and CEO of OP Labs, stated in an internal letter that the layoffs are not due to financial pressure, as the company currently has sufficient funds and years of cash flow reserves. This move aims to "streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and reduce collaboration costs."Currently, Optimism is undergoing a transformation. Last month, Base, the largest chain in the OP Stack ecosystem, announced a shift to a self-developed unified tech stack, which raised market concerns about Optimism's long-term sustainability, leading to a roughly 37% drop in the price of OP tokens over the past 30 days. Despite the challenges, OP Labs has established a roadmap for 2026, focusing on faster block times, native interoperability, custom compliance controls, and a zero-knowledge proof (ZK Proof) system aligned with the Ethereum roadmap. Additionally, OP token holders had previously voted to allocate 50% of Superchain sequencer revenue for token buybacks.

According to Arkham data, at 03:26, 40 million OP (worth approximately 4.67 million USD) was transferred from Optimism to an anonymous address (starting with 0x7336...).

According to Arkham data, at 21:10, 9 million WLD (worth approximately $3.5954 million) was transferred from an anonymous address (starting with 0x0000...) to Upbit. Subsequently, the address transferred 9 million WLD to Optimism.

According to official news, Optimism announced that it will stop supporting op-geth and op-program on May 31, 2026. During this period, security patches and critical bug fixes will still be released, but new feature development, including the next Karst hard fork, will only take place on op-reth. The fault proof program of op-program will also be migrated to kona-client, and the current deployment is expected to continue to be usable before the Karst hard fork.Chain operators must complete the migration by the time of the Karst hard fork; otherwise, chains still running op-geth will not be able to follow the main chain. cannon-kona can run in the existing op-node environment without the need to use kona-node, which is an optional component. Node operators should migrate to op-reth as soon as possible to maintain network compatibility and receive support for new features.

10 Research published on platform X indicates that the current structure of the cryptocurrency market is changing. Altcoins overall remain relatively weak, while Bitcoin is in an oversold zone. However, at the same time, the market positions for crypto stocks and some selected altcoins are quietly shifting, with certain assets starting to outperform. Among them, Optimism (OP) is under pressure, with OP-USDT currently breaking below the 7-day and 30-day moving averages, showing a bearish technical outlook, and experiencing a decline of 24.4% over the past week.Additionally, the Base blockchain is gradually separating from the OP Stack, which means that the previous revenue-sharing partnership between the two has ended. Optimism has officially launched its first monthly token buyback plan, committing to use 50% of the remaining Superchain revenue to repurchase OP in the open market. The liquid staking protocol ether.fi has migrated all of its non-custodial operations to the OP mainnet to leverage its enterprise-grade scalability, providing some fundamental support for OP.

According to The Block, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network Base announced that it will no longer rely on Optimism's OP Stack and Superchain architecture, instead opting for a "unified stack" operated independently by Base.According to the official blog, Base will integrate core components that were previously scattered across multiple teams and code repositories (including key modules like the sequencer) into a unified codebase "base/base" to reduce coordination and maintenance costs, and to optimize deeply for its own needs.At the same time, Base will also reduce its external dependencies on Flashbots, Paradigm, and others. In terms of governance, Base will adjust the security committee structure, replacing the original Optimism-related seats with newly added independent signers.Despite the shift towards an autonomous technical architecture, Base stated that the protocol will remain open source and publicly standardized, welcoming third-party developers to create independent clients and maintain cross-upgrade compatibility. Base is currently the largest network in the OP Stack Superchain ecosystem.

According to tracking data from the Web3 asset data platform RootData X, in the past 7 days, the Ethereum L2 solution Optimism has been the project that X (Twitter) top figures have unfollowed the most. The new influential figures on X who have unfollowed this project include cryptocurrency trader Loomdart (@loomdart), NFT collector Gmoney (@gmoneynft), and 陳威廉 (@williamlab).In addition, the project that X top figures have unfollowed the most also includes OKX Wallet.