This week, the Superchain didn’t move on hype or breaking news — it moved on clarity.

The Superchain now processes over 59% of all Layer 2 transactions, handles ~21 million transactions per day, and supports 800+ active applications contributing to the Optimism Collective. What’s changed isn’t just scale — it’s coordination. For the first time, the ecosystem has a shared observability layer that lets builders, operators, and governance participants reason about the Superchain as a single system, not a loose set of rollups.

At the center of this shift is the Messari Optimism Portal: a unified, no-login dashboard that maps OP Mainnet, Base, and the wider Superchain across usage, fees, DEX volume, TVL, stablecoin flows, and application activity — paired with research context and AI summaries. This isn’t just analytics. It’s a coordination upgrade.

We also cover the latest ecosystem pulse: Base’s new consumer-facing app, Soneium’s recurring Score Seasons, Mode’s AI trading agents, and evolving governance conversations around institutional alignment and real-world assets.

The takeaway is simple: as the Superchain reaches sustained production scale, visibility and shared understanding become critical infrastructure. Coordination — not just throughput — is now the limiting factor.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

This content is educational only. Crypto is volatile — always do your own research.

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High-signal coverage of the OP Stack, Base, and the Superchain — for builders, operators, and onchain teams who want clarity, not hype.

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A new 21Shares outlook is sounding the alarm: most Ethereum Layer 2 networks may not survive past 2026 as activity, liquidity, and developers continue to concentrate around a small group of dominant chains.

After two years of rapid expansion, the L2 ecosystem is hitting a breaking point. While more than 50 Layer 2s are live today, nearly 90% of L2 transactions are already concentrated on just Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism — with Base alone processing over 60%. According to the report, usage across weaker L2s is down 61% since mid-2025, turning many into so-called “zombie chains.”

Several retrenchments highlight the trend: Kinto shut down, Loopring closed its wallet, and Blast’s TVL collapsed by over 90%. Even major DeFi protocols like Aave and Synthetix have scaled back deployments on underperforming L2s due to low liquidity and weak returns.

A key catalyst was Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, which cut data costs by roughly 90%. While great for users, it triggered intense fee competition that pushed most rollups into losses. Base was the only L2 to generate positive revenue in 2025, reportedly earning around $55 million.

Looking ahead, 21Shares expects a much leaner L2 landscape — dominated by exchange-backed networks like Base, ETH-aligned designs such as Linea, and a small number of high-performance rollups built for near-real-time execution.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile. Always do your own research before investing or deploying capital.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show

High-signal coverage of Base, OP Mainnet, the OP Stack, and the Superchain — for builders, traders, and on-chain operators who want clarity, not hype.

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Subscribe for ongoing coverage of L2 revenue, migrations, and adoption trends — and check our other videos for deeper dives into Ethereum scaling.

Surf just raised $15 million in a round led by Pantera, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and DCG — a strong signal that crypto needs its own AI research tools, not generic models repurposed for digital assets.

Surf is a crypto-native AI research and intelligence platform trained exclusively on on-chain data, social sentiment, token behavior, and market structure. Instead of broad language models, Surf uses multi-agent systems designed to understand crypto markets and deliver structured analysis through a chat interface that feels like working with a dedicated analyst.

The traction is real. Since launching in July, Surf has reached millions in annual recurring revenue, generated over one million research reports, and is already used by a large majority of top exchanges and research firms, growing roughly 50% month over month.

For traders, funds, and protocol teams, this matters. As the Superchain and wider crypto ecosystem grow, risk management, governance analysis, and market monitoring will increasingly rely on AI tools that actually understand crypto-native data.

The takeaway is clear: crypto-native AI is no longer experimental. With this raise, Surf is positioning itself as a core research layer for the industry.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile — always do your own research before making investment or trading decisions.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show

High-signal coverage of Base, OP Mainnet, the OP Stack, and the Superchain — for builders, traders, and on-chain operators who want clarity, not hype.

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Base is accelerating into a full-stack consumer crypto platform. Coinbase has launched its tokenized “Everything App” on Base — combining social content, trading, payments, and earning into a single surface. It’s live in 140+ countries and built on open protocols like Farcaster and Zora, where every post can become a tradeable asset. Social becomes the funnel, trading becomes the engine, and tokenization becomes the glue.

Meanwhile, Base’s creator narrative is colliding with on-chain reality: speculative flows dominate, liquidity is concentrated around Aerodrome, token factories like Zora, Virtuals, and Clanker fuel spam vectors, and actual creator income remains limited. Base is succeeding as a social-financial layer, not yet a creator economy.

We also break down RLUSD, Ripple’s upcoming trust-regulated stablecoin launching on Base and Optimism via Wormhole NTT, and the macro signals shaping Base liquidity: ETF flows, stablecoin inflows, volatility regimes, and ETH-denominated collateral demand into 2026.

The direction is clear: Base is becoming a consumer execution layer where attention converts directly into trading and payments. Builders, traders, and treasuries need to model trust assumptions, monitor liquidity concentration, and plan for regulated stablecoins entering the stack.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile — always do your own research before trading, deploying, or integrating new infrastructure.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show

High-signal coverage of Base, OP Mainnet, the OP Stack, and the Superchain — for builders, founders, and on-chain operators who want clarity, not hype.

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Lisk has fully reinvented itself. The chain you remember from years ago is gone — in 2025, Lisk is an Ethereum Layer-2 built on the OP Stack, plugged into the Superchain and optimized for real-world users, not hype cycles. Instead of chasing casino apps, Lisk is building for founders and communities in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America — regions where Web3 solves real problems: hyperinflation, remittances, identity, access to banking, and mobile payments.

Lisk’s “human layer” strategy focuses on incubators and teams on the ground in Cape Town, Nairobi, Jakarta, and Buenos Aires, supporting startups with funding, mentorship, and global scaling. On the tech side, Lisk is EVM equivalent, extremely low cost, Superchain compatible, mobile-first, and optimized for stablecoin payments, identity systems, creator tools, and real-world dApps.

It already hosts real businesses solving multi-billion-dollar problems — from stablecoins for Indonesia to supply-chain tools in South Africa. With a $15M founder fund, incubator partnerships, and a three-stage pipeline from ideation to global scale, Lisk is positioning itself where the next billion users will come from.

If you're a builder, user, investor, or founder looking at emerging markets, Lisk is one of the most important OP Stack ecosystems to watch right now.

00:00 — What if a blockchain was built for real people?

00:16 — Lisk’s 2025 transformation into an OP Stack Layer-2

00:46 — The “human layer”: building where Web3 solves real problems

01:40 — Lisk’s tech: EVM equivalent, mobile-first, OP Stack, payments

02:49 — Real startups building on Lisk across emerging markets

03:26 — The $15M founder pipeline: incubators → funding → scaling

04:11 — Why emerging markets matter for crypto’s next billion users

04:45 — Who Lisk is for & why to watch it

05:17 — Final thoughts + subscribe

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile — always do your own research before investing or building.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show

High-signal coverage of the OP Stack, Base, and the Superchain — for founders, builders, and on-chain operators who want clarity, not hype.

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Subscribe for weekly breakdowns of Superchain ecosystems, deep dives, and real-world adoption signals across L2s.

Celo just hit a major milestone: the Jello hardfork is now live, activating OP Succinct Lite on Mainnet and making Celo the first chain to run this new OP Stack upgrade in production. It also becomes the first network to launch a fully auditable EigenDA data availability bridge, marking a big leap in security and scalability.

The upgrade brings ZK-powered fault proofs, a new Rust-based EVM client integrated with Succinct’s SP1 prover, and a live challenger set—independent actors monitoring proposer behavior to challenge bad state submissions.

This strengthens censorship resistance, trust guarantees, and decentralization from day one.

For users and builders, this means better data availability, stronger security, and low-fee performance while keeping Celo aligned with mobile-first payments.

For the OP Stack and the Superchain, it's real proof that OP tech, EigenDA, and ZK systems can run together in production — moving both ecosystems closer to higher throughput and Stage 2 readiness. Celo just upgraded its core security and scalability using OP tech — a win for both Celo and the broader Superchain.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile — always do your own research before making decisions.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show High-signal coverage of Base, OP Stack, and the Superchain — for builders, founders, and on-chain explorers who prefer clarity over hype.

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Launching a DAO used to be slow, risky, and technically painful. Aragon turns that entire process into plug-and-play governance, letting teams launch DAOs like installing apps — with audited modules, fine-grained permissions, multichain execution, and no Solidity required.

Aragon’s modular stack includes token voting, multisigs, ve-lockers, encrypted proposals, optimistic governance flows, LayerZero cross-chain execution, and zkSync-based cheap voting. Plugins live in a secure, ENS-indexed repository, allowing DAOs to upgrade safely without rewriting dangerous code.

With OSx, new DAO templates, privacy features via Vocdoni, and a growing plugin marketplace, Aragon is becoming the app store and security desk for DAO governance — trusted by Curve, Polygon’s Protocol Council, and major protocols securing billions.

If you’re building DAOs, DeFi protocols, or multichain governance, Aragon offers auditable, modular, production-ready infrastructure that scales across the Superchain and beyond.

⚠️ Not Financial Advice

Crypto is volatile — always do your own research before deploying governance or launching a DAO.

🎙️ About The Optimism Show

High-signal coverage of Base, OP Mainnet, the OP Stack, and the Superchain — built for founders, builders, and DAO operators who want clarity over hype.

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