Optimism developers announced a 20% layoff, a move aimed at consolidating the business rather than for financial reasons

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.