Key Highlights
- Optimism committed roughly 150M OP across Seasons 8 and 9 in Year 4 (May 2025–April 2026), down from 229.92M OP in Year 3
- Retroactive Public Goods Funding was paused entirely, user airdrops fell to zero, and the Grants Council budget was cut to a 4.2M OP ceiling
- For Year 5, the Foundation forecasts about 273M OP in new circulating supply, pushing total circulating supply to roughly 2.5 billion OP (58.3% of total supply) by April 2027
The Optimism Foundation committed about 150 million OP tokens in Year 4 (May 2025–April 2026), a roughly 35% drop from the 229.92 million OP spent in Year 3.
According to a governance forum post published on Thursday, the cuts came from pausing Retro Funding, halting user airdrops, and reducing Governance Fund grants, as Optimism redirected its remaining budget toward growing OP Mainnet activity and signing up OP Enterprise customers.
Optimism is one of the largest Ethereum Layer 2 networks, running both the flagship OP Mainnet chain and the broader Superchain, a family of interoperable rollups built on the OP Stack. The Optimism Foundation manages a fixed token budget carved out of OP’s original 4.29 billion token supply, funding grants, incentives, and ecosystem programs without needing separate governance approval, as long as spending stays within that original allocation, which it did again in Year 4.
The Numbers: A Third Less Spending, No New Ask
The Foundation was explicit that it did not request any new token allocation, saying it “continues to operate entirely within the original allocation framework” set out at Optimism’s launch.
The pullback was broad-based rather than concentrated in one program:
- Governance Fund disbursements fell 53% year over year, from 28.7 million OP in Year 3 to 13.4 million OP in Year 4
- Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro Funding) spending fell 30%, from 20.3 million OP to 14.2 million OP, after the program was paused following the Season 7 missions
- User airdrops dropped to zero OP, down from 10.4 million OP distributed in Year 3, following the completion of Airdrop 5
As of August 6, 2026, total OP circulating supply stands at 2,160,975,703 tokens (50.3% of the fully diluted 4.29 billion OP supply), while total committed OP, including locked and vesting allocations, sits at 2,661,025,908 tokens, or 62.0% of supply.
Where the Money Is Going Instead: OP Mainnet and “OP Enterprise”
Rather than broad grants, the Foundation says Year 4 spending was concentrated on two goals: growing transaction activity on OP Mainnet and signing customers to OP Enterprise, the institutional infrastructure product Optimism launched in January 2026 across Fully Managed, Self Managed, and OP Mainnet tiers.
The Foundation pointed to several early OP Enterprise wins during Year 4:
- Bitpanda’s Vision Chain, launched as the first Fully Managed OP Enterprise chain
- Ink, which upgraded to the Fully Managed tier
- Dunamu, operator of South Korea’s largest exchange, which signed an MOU for GIWA Chain
- Ether.fi, which brought its payments-focused DeFi products to OP Mainnet, reporting $220 million in TVL and more than 70,000 active cards
On the network side, the Foundation said OP Mainnet was “one of the few OP Chains to grow transactions through the period,” citing a 60%+ increase in monthly transactions during Year 4, per the Superchain Health Dashboard. Core protocol development during the year focused on throughput targets of 200 Mgas per second, block times as low as 200 milliseconds, OP Succinct ZK proof integration for faster withdrawals, and native privacy infrastructure for the OP Stack.
Retro Funding Stays Paused, Buyback Program Continues
Retroactive Public Goods Funding, one of Optimism’s signature mechanisms for rewarding ecosystem builders after the fact, remained paused throughout Year 4 with no new rounds initiated following the Season 7 Onchain Builders and Developer Tooling missions.
Cumulative Retro Funding commitments now total 81.4 million OP, just 9.5% of its 859 million OP allocation, leaving 90.5% (777.6 million OP) reserved for future rounds. The Foundation said the pause is meant to let it evaluate the impact of funding distributed so far before committing further capital.
Separately, governance’s 12-month OP buyback program, which directs up to 50% of Superchain revenue toward monthly token purchases, has repurchased more than 9 million OP to date, tying network revenue directly to token demand.
Year 5 Outlook: ~273M More OP Entering Circulation
For Year 5 (May 2026–April 2027), the Foundation forecasts continued discipline within the existing framework, with the following directional estimates for new OP entering circulation:
| Category | Year 5 Forecast |
|---|---|
| Governance Fund | 10M OP |
| Ecosystem Fund | 200M OP |
| Airdrops | 0 OP |
| Retro Funding | 0 OP |
| Early Core Contributors | 47.6M OP |
| Investors | 15.3M OP |
| Estimated circulating supply, end of Year 5 | ~2.504B OP (58.3% of total) |
The Foundation noted these projections assume no changes to the existing airdrop allocation, flagging a separate, related governance proposal to re-designate the unused user airdrop allocation as a “Strategic Ecosystem Fund,” a proposal the Foundation says is independent of this budget outlook.
Why It Matters
The Year 4 numbers mark a clear pivot for Optimism away from the broad-based grants and airdrop strategy that defined its earlier seasons, toward a narrower, revenue-linked model built around enterprise chain deployments and Mainnet usage.
For OP holders, the combination of reduced token issuance, zero airdrop dilution, and an active buyback program is a structurally tighter supply picture than Year 3, though the Year 5 forecast still points to roughly 273 million additional OP entering circulation over the next twelve months, keeping dilution firmly on the table.
Whether the OP Enterprise strategy can convert early design partners like Bitpanda and Dunamu into durable, revenue-generating chains will likely determine whether this more conservative budget approach continues into Year 6.
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