Optimism

Mission & Key Concepts

From the code to the values, we are Ethereum-aligned. We believe Ethereum has the potential to solve some of humanity’s most crucial coordination issues. Since our initial inception as a non-profit research group, we have have sought to scale both its technology and values.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

The Optimism Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to growing the Optimism Collective.

The Optimism Collective is an ambitious mission to solve human coordination problems that crypto has thus far been unable to.

Not only do we improve Ethereum's performance by orders of magnitude, we donate 100% of the profits generated from doing so to Ethereum public goods. We do this because we believe the future of the open internet is too important to be left to chance. By operating as a Public Benefit Corporation we're able to align private incentives with public good and create a positive-sum economic model that provides a sustainable future for the internet.

current challenges

• At present the most pressing bottleneck to the growth of Ethereum is its performance and scalability. We are building the most elegant solution to this problem. We do this out in the open because we believe in open source and its ability to accelerate innovation.
• Simplicity has been the fundamental driver of Optimism's design architecture since we abandoned the OVM for EVM equivalence in 2021. Optimism’s year-old EVM equivalence update still holds up today.
• Over the past year, we’ve been working on a next-gen modular architecture code-named Bedrock. Now, Bedrock is part of something bigger: the OP Stack. Our #1 priority today remains shipping the Bedrock upgrade to mainnet. But—the OP Stack opens up a new world of possibilities in the future.

Culture & Perks

• We take care of our employees—from fully paid medical, dental and vision to a 4% 401K match, we've got you covered.
• We take pride in the accomplishments of our teammates and support each other in doing the best work of our careers.
• Our team is a diverse group of people from a variety of backgrounds and interests. We cherish our eclecticism and consider it a great strength.
• We have a transparent, feedback-driven and fun-centric culture.
• We are a team of builders—our founding team has been working on Ethereum scalability since 2015.

We currently have 46 full-time employees. Our hiring is dictated by our strategic roadmap and feedback from Optimists. We believe we can achieve our goals while maintaining an agile and high-impact team.

We are location agnostic and remote-first. We currently have teammates in 8 countries.

Workspace equipment stipend: You should have what you need to do the best work of your career. You’ll be able to configure and select the computer that works best for you as well as surrounding office accoutrements. Standing desk? Japanese floor chair? Some sweet noise cancelling headphones? The choice is yours with a $1,000 WFH stipend.

History & Achievments

Founded: 2019

Headquarters: New York, US

Funding

• Optimism has raised a total of $178.5M in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Mar 17, 2022 from a Series B round.
• It is funded by 4 investors. Nascent and Paradigm are the most recent investors.

Now, Optimism has around $5.75 billion TVL currently held on L2 Blockchains.

core team

• Jinglan Wang - CEO and Co-Founder
• Karl Floersch - CTO and Co-Founder
• Kevin Ho - Protocol Product Manager & Co-Founder