Original Title: The Case for Selling $OP Before $BASE
Original Author: @13300RPM, Four Pillars Researcher
Original translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Key Points
· High revenue concentration: In 2025, Base contributed about 71% of the sequencer revenue for the Superchain. This concentration trend is intensifying, yet the percentage of fees that Coinbase pays to Optimism is fixed at 2.5%.
· Price Divergence from Ecosystem Growth: The OP token has plummeted by 93% from its historical high ($4.84 → $0.32), while Base's total value locked (TVL) has increased by 48% during the same period ($3.1 billion → $5 billion). The market has recognized that Base's growth has not benefited OP token holders, but it has not yet considered the risk of Base potentially exiting.
· Zero technical barriers: The OP Stack uses the MIT open-source license, which means Coinbase can fork it at any time. Currently, the only link keeping Base within the Superchain is its governance relationship. A standalone BASE token with independent governance would completely sever this connection.
· Fragile Alliance: Optimism granted Base 118 million OP tokens to ensure long-term cooperation, but limited its voting power to 9% of the total supply. This is not a genuine stake in shared interests, but rather a minority equity stake with an "exit option." If renegotiation leads to a drop in the OP price, it would be a favorable trade for Coinbase to abandon the revenue-sharing benefits in exchange for canceling the value of this grant.
Base, the L2 network owned by Coinbase, contributed approximately 71% of the sequencer revenue for the Superchain in 2025, yet only paid 2.5% of that to the Optimism Collective. The OP Stack uses the MIT open-source license, and from both a technical and legal standpoint, nothing prevents Coinbase from threatening to exit in order to renegotiate terms or building independent infrastructure, effectively rendering Superchain membership meaningless. Holders of OP tokens are exposed to significant downside risk due to their reliance on revenue from a single counterparty, and we believe the market has not yet fully recognized this risk.
1. Take 71% of the revenue and pay only 2.5% in "rent"
When Optimism initially signed the agreement with Base, the underlying assumption was that no single chain would dominate the Superchain's economic ecosystem, which could lead to an imbalanced revenue sharing. The fee-sharing model is calculated as the higher of either "2.5% of the chain's revenue" or "15% of the chain's profit (revenue minus L1 gas costs)." This seems reasonable for a collaborative, diversified Rollup ecosystem.
But this assumption was wrong. In 2025, Base generated $74 million in chain revenue, accounting for over 71% of all OP chain sequencer fees, yet it only paid 2.5% to the Optimism Collective. This means Coinbase captured 28 times more value than it contributed. By October 2025, Base's TVL had reached $5 billion (a 48% increase in just six months), making it the first Ethereum L2 to cross this threshold. Since then, its dominance has only continued to grow.
The subsidy mechanism exacerbates this imbalance. Although Base dominates revenue generation, the OP mainnet, which shares 100% of its profits with the Collective, bears an excessive burden in terms of ecosystem contributions. In essence, the OP mainnet is subsidizing the political cohesion of this alliance, while its largest member contributes the smallest share.
Where have these fees gone? According to Optimism's official documentation, sequencer revenue flows into the Optimism Collective treasury. To date, this treasury has accumulated over $34 million from Superchain fees, but these funds have yet to be utilized or allocated to any specific projects.
The envisioned "flywheel" (funding public goods → public goods strengthen the ecosystem → the ecosystem generates more fees) has not even started to turn yet. Currently, projects like RetroPGF and ecosystem grants are funded by the inflation of OP tokens, not from ETH in the treasury. This is significant because it undermines the core value proposition of joining the Superchain. Base contributes about $1.85 million annually to a treasury, but this treasury does not provide direct economic returns to the fee-paying member chains.
Governance participation also illustrates the issue. In January 2024, Base released the "Base Participation in Optimism Governance Declaration." However, since then, there have been no further public actions: no proposals, no forum discussions, and no visible governance engagement. As a chain contributing over 70% of the economic value to the Superchain, Base's absence from the governance process it claimed to participate in is glaring. Even Optimism's own governance forum rarely mentions Base. The so-called "shared governance" value appears to be nothing more than theoretical rhetoric from both sides.
Therefore, the "value" of Superchain membership remains entirely forward-looking—future interoperability, future governance influence, and future network effects. For publicly traded companies that are accountable to their shareholders, "future value" is hard to be persuasive when current costs are concrete and ongoing.
The final question boils down to: Does Coinbase have any economic incentive to maintain the status quo? And what will happen when they decide they no longer need to?
2. Potential "Forks" at Any Time
This is the legal reality behind all Superchain relationships: the OP Stack is a public good licensed under the MIT protocol. Anyone in the world can freely clone, fork, or deploy it without any permission required.
So, what keeps chains like Base, Mode, Worldcoin, and Zora within the Superchain? According to Optimism's documentation, the answer lies in a set of "soft constraints": the right to participate in shared governance, shared upgrades and security, the ecosystem fund, and the legitimacy of the Superchain brand. Chains choose to join voluntarily, not out of compulsion.
We believe that this distinction is critical when assessing the risks of OP.
Imagine what a Coinbase fork would lose: participation rights in Optimism governance, the "Superchain" brand, and the channel for coordinating protocol upgrades.
Think again about what they would retain: 100% of the $5 billion TVL, all users, all applications deployed on Base, and sequencer revenue of over $74 million annually.
For "soft constraints" to take effect, the prerequisite is that Base must obtain certain resources from Optimism that it cannot build or purchase on its own. However, there is evidence that Base is actively building independence. In December 2025, Base launched a cross-chain bridge directly to Solana, which uses Coinbase's own infrastructure and is built on Chainlink CCIP, rather than relying on the Superchain's interoperability solution. This indicates that Base is not passively waiting for the Superchain's interoperability plan.
We are not claiming that Coinbase will fork tomorrow. What we want to highlight is that the MIT license itself is a fully mature "exit option," and Coinbase's recent actions indicate that they are actively reducing their reliance on the value provided by the Superchain. A BASE token with independent governance will complete this transition, turning those "soft constraints" from meaningful limitations into purely ceremonial associations.
For OP token holders, the question is simple: if the only reason Base remains within the Superchain is for the sake of superficial "ecosystem alliance," what will happen when Coinbase decides this act is no longer worth it?
3. The negotiations have actually already begun.
"Start Exploring"—this is exactly the standard phrase used by every L2 in the 6–12 months before the official token launch.
In September 2025, Jesse Pollak announced at the BaseCamp event that Base was "beginning to explore" the issuance of a native token. He cautiously added, however, that "there are currently no concrete plans," and that Coinbase "has no intention of announcing a launch date anytime soon." This is notable because until the end of 2024, Coinbase had clearly stated that it had no plans to issue a Base token. This announcement came months after Kraken revealed its INK token plans for the Ink Network, marking a shift in the competitive landscape of L2 tokenization.
We believe that the framing of these concepts is as important as their substance. Pollak describes tokens as "powerful levers for expanding governance, aligning developer incentives, and opening new design pathways." These are not neutral terms. Protocol upgrades, fee parameters, ecosystem grants, sequencer selection—these are precisely the areas currently governed by Superchain governance. A BASE token with governance rights over these decisions would overlap with Optimism's governance, while Coinbase would gain greater economic dominance.
To understand why the BASE token would fundamentally change the relationship, it's first necessary to understand the current governance mechanism of the Superchain.
The Optimism Collective adopts a bicameral system:
· Token Parliament (OP holders): Vote on protocol upgrades, grants, and governance proposals.
Citizen's Assembly (badge holders): Vote on the allocation of RetroPGF funds.
The upgrade authority of Base is controlled by a 2/2 multisignature wallet, with the signers being Base and the Optimism Foundation—neither party can unilaterally upgrade Base's contracts. Once fully implemented, the Security Council will execute upgrades "according to instructions from Optimism governance."
This structure gives Optimism shared control over Base, rather than unilateral control. The 2-of-2 multisig serves as a system of mutual checks and balances: Optimism cannot force upgrades that Base does not want, but Base cannot upgrade on its own without Optimism's signature.
If Coinbase decides to follow the path of other L2 governance tokens like ARB and OP, structural conflicts will be inevitable. If BASE token holders vote on protocol upgrades, whose decisions take precedence—BASE governance or OP governance? If BASE has its own grant program, why would developers on Base still need to wait for RetroPGF? If BASE governance controls sequencer selection, what authority remains for the 2-of-2 multisig?
Crucially, Optimism governance cannot prevent Base from issuing a token with overlapping governance scope. The "Chain of Law" outlines user protection and interoperability standards, but does not restrict what a chain's governance actors can do with their own tokens. Coinbase could launch a BASE token with full governance rights over the Base protocol tomorrow, and Optimism's only countermeasure would be political pressure—namely, the "soft constraints" that have already proven largely ineffective.
Another interesting perspective is the constraints faced by a publicly traded company. This will be the first token generation event (TGE) led by a publicly traded company. Traditional token sales and airdrops aim to maximize token value for private investors and founding teams. However, Coinbase has a fiduciary duty to its COIN shareholders. Any token allocation plan must demonstrate that it enhances Coinbase's corporate value.
This changes the game. Coinbase can't just airdrop tokens to maximize community goodwill. They need a structure that boosts the COIN stock price. One approach is to use the BASE token as leverage to renegotiate and reduce the revenue share for the Superchain, thereby increasing Base's retained earnings and ultimately enhancing Coinbase's financial statements.
4. Counterarguments Regarding "Reputational Risk"
The strongest argument against our position is as follows: Coinbase is a publicly traded company that has positioned itself as a model of "compliance and cooperation" in the crypto space. Forking the OP Stack to save a few million dollars in revenue annually would appear petty and could damage the carefully cultivated brand image. This argument is well worth considering seriously.
Superchain indeed provides real value. Its roadmap includes native cross-chain communication, and the total value locked across all Ethereum L2s reached a peak of approximately $55.5 billion in December 2025. Base benefits from composability with the OP mainnet, Unichain, and Worldchain. Giving up such network effects comes at a cost.
In addition, there is a grant of 118 million OP tokens. To solidify a "long-term alliance," the Optimism Foundation has given Base the opportunity to receive approximately 118 million OP tokens over six years. At the time the agreement was reached, this grant was valued at around $175 million.
But we believe this defense misunderstands the real threat. The counterargument assumes an open, aggressive fork. A more likely path, however, would be a soft renegotiation: Coinbase leveraging the BASE token to negotiate more favorable terms within the Superchain. This negotiation would likely not even make the news outside of governance forums.
Let's look at the interoperability argument. Base has independently built its own bridge to Solana using CCIP, without relying on Optimism's interoperability solution. They haven't been waiting for a Superchain interoperability plan. Instead, they are actively building their own cross-chain infrastructure in parallel. When you're taking initiative to solve problems yourself, the soft constraint of "shared upgrades and security" becomes less important.
Let's look at the OP grants. Base's ability to vote or delegate these grants is limited to no more than 9% of the total circulating supply. This is not a deep lock-up, but rather a minority stake with limited governance rights. Coinbase cannot control Optimism with 9%, and similarly, Optimism cannot control Base with this stake. At the current price (around $0.32), the total 118 million OP grants are worth about $38 million. If renegotiation leads to a 30% drop in the price of OP due to reduced revenue expectations for Base, Coinbase's paper loss on this grant would be negligible compared to the permanent cancellation or a significant reduction in the revenue-sharing agreement.
Reducing a 2.5% revenue share from over $74 million in annualized income to 0.5% would save Coinbase more than $1.4 million annually in perpetuity. In comparison, the one-time write-down of the OP grant value of about $10 million is relatively a small amount.
Institutional investors don't care about Superchain's politics. They care about Base's TVL, trading volume, and Coinbase's profitability. A renegotiated revenue-sharing agreement won't cause fluctuations in COIN's stock price. It will simply appear as a routine governance update on Optimism's forum and slightly improve the profit margin of Coinbase's L2 business.
5. A single income source with an "exit option" attached
We believe that OP has not yet been regarded by the market as an asset with counterparty risk, but it should be.
The token has fallen 93% from its historical high of $4.84 to approximately $0.32, with a circulating market capitalization of about $620 million. The market has clearly downgraded OP, but we believe it has not yet fully accounted for the structural risks embedded in the Superchain economic model.
The market's divergence highlights the issue. Base's TVL increased from $3.1 billion in January 2025 to a peak of over $5.6 billion in October. Base is winning, while OP holders are not. Consumer attention has largely shifted to Base, and despite new partnerships, the OP mainnet still lags in regular user activity.
Superchain appears to be a decentralized collective. However, economically, it heavily relies on a single counterparty, which has ample incentive to renegotiate.
Looking at the concentration of revenue: Base contributes over 71% of all sequencer revenue for the Optimism Collective. The high contribution percentage from the OP mainnet is not due to rapid growth, but because it shares 100% of its profits, whereas Base shares only 2.5% or 15%.
Now let's look at the asymmetric return structure faced by OP holders:
- If Base remains and grows: OP captures 2.5% of the revenue, while Base retains 97.5%.
· If Base renegotiates to ~0.5%: OP will lose about 80% of its revenue from Base. The largest economic contributor to the Superchain becomes insignificant.
· If Base completely exits: OP will lose its economic engine overnight.
In all three scenarios, the upside potential is limited, while the downside potential could be infinite. What you hold is a long position in an income stream, and the largest payer holds all the chips, including an MIT protocol exit option and a new token that could potentially establish independent governance rights at any time.
The market seems to have already digested the idea that "Base's growth does not effectively benefit OP token holders." However, what we believe has not yet been digested is the exit risk—the possibility that Coinbase could use the BASE token as leverage to renegotiate terms, or worse, gradually and completely disengage from Superchain governance.
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