Optimism ecosystem has new developments. Recently, this layer 2 network proposed an interesting buyback mechanism — planning to allocate 50% of the revenue generated by the super chain to repurchase OP tokens, aiming to strengthen the positive feedback loop between token value and ecosystem growth.

How exactly will it work? According to the governance proposal, Optimism will initiate voting on January 22. If the community agrees, the monthly buyback plan will be implemented starting in February. Where does the funding come from? It comes from the fees generated by the sequencers across the OP Stack ecosystem chains — including Coinbase's Base, Uniswap's Unichain, World’s World Chain, Sony's Soneium, and other participants connected to the super chain network.

Once the news broke, the OP token price surged about 5% in the short term. However, in the context of the overall trend, this increase seems somewhat modest. Over the past year, OP has fallen by 83%, which is quite severe. Whether this buyback proposal can reverse the downward trend depends on subsequent execution and market response.

From a mechanism design perspective, using ecosystem revenue to support token value makes OP’s growth logic more coherent. If the super chain ecosystem truly prospers and sequencer fee income rises, the buyback funds will also increase accordingly, creating a virtuous cycle. The key question is whether it can truly attract more top-tier applications and developers to build on the chain. Now, it all depends on how the market responds.