OP Mainnet: Overview

What is OP Mainnet?
OP Mainnet was the original Ethereum L2 built on the OP Stack, designed to enhance Ethereum’s scalability and reduce transaction costs. It currently processes around 1 million transactions per day and anchors a rapidly expanding the Superchain, a network of rollups built on the open-source OP Stack that enables the creation of interoperable blockchains. 

OP mainnet dashboard

Explore all of our most critical real-time OP Mainnet analytics in one place, including fee breakdowns and income statements. We’ve made evaluating economic activity, user engagement, and protocol-level operations significantly easier for the common user.

We’re also backing these granular insights with raw chain data, divided across tabs for financials and on-chain activity. The resulting output is valuable metrics for investors, builders, researchers, policy analysts, and casual participants.

How can I use OP Mainnet analytics?

You’ll find our OP Mainnet dashboard divided into two main categories: Financials and Onchain Activity. Each tab demonstrates specifics using standardized calculations based on live OP Mainnet data, some of which includes:

Financials

• Real Economic Value (Network REV) from L1 and L2 fees
• Operator payments and Ethereum data costs
• Gross profit and Token Holder Net Income
• Expense breakdowns for the Optimsm Collective and OP Labs

Onchain Activity

• Wallet-level usage and transaction trends
• Application-level engagement and DEX traffic
• Adoption signals, user retention, and fee dynamics

You can filter these OP Mainnet analytics by daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly intervals to better understand trend cycles and seasonality.

How is OP Mainnet data gathered?

We pull our OP Mainnet analytics from a blend of industry-grade indexers (like Dune and Goldsky), direct RPC endpoints, and of course our custom Blockworks Research models. We also validate OP Mainnet data across various sources and normalize the outputs for consistency.

What is Network REV in OP Mainnet analytics?

Network REV (Real Economic Value) helps to measure users' on-chain fees when transacting via OP Mainnet. Unlike some L1 blockchains, OP Mainnet does not include out-of-protocol tips. That means all REV is derived from three in-protocol fees:

L1 Fee: This covers the cost of settling data on the Ethereum main net. Note that this varies depending on how congested the network is.

**L2 Base Fee: **The minimal fee in a given block, based on timely OP Mainnet demand.

**L2 Priority Fee: **Any extra fees that users pay to jump the queue during periods of congestion. Because OP Mainnet uses priority ordering, these fees help sophisticated users bid for faster inclusion.

Network REV is a hearty metric for tracking the current monetary demand among network users. It's a standardized lens you can use when comparing OP Mainnet to other chains.

What is Token Holder Net Income?

Token Holder Net Income is the portion of OP Mainnet's Real Economic Value that flows back to token holders after subtracting operator payments and internal expenses. OP Mainnet plays a unique role in the Optimism ecosystem, contributing 100% of its net onchain sequencer revenue (Network REV less L1 Operator Payments) to the Optimism Collective, which is governed by the OP Token Holders. 

OP Token Holders do not have control over OP Mainnet. Instead, they receive the net income generated by the chain through the OP Collective Fee Split since OP Token Holders have governance rights within that system. Refer to the Superchain Financials to understand the full picture of OP value accrual. 

Why is on-chain activity important in OP Mainnet analytics?
Tracking transaction volumes and protocol-level behavior helps decode user growth and application momentum. This is the section to pin if you want to monitor Optimism's traction among developers, power users, applications, and new market entrants.

What applications are most active on Optimism?

OP Mainnet analytics allows users to track DEXs, DeFi protocols, games, and infra tools by their on-chain footprint. In turn, these insights help identify which apps are driving revenue, usage, and ecosystem stickiness. The OP Stack offers simplified primitives for developers who want to build their own L2s. So, activity on OP Mainnet proper is a helpful signal when evaluating the real-time flow of both users and capital.

How can I track DEX activity on OP Mainnet?

The OP Mainnet dashboard's DEX metrics mainly focus on swap volume, asset pair dynamics, and protocol-level liquidity trends. This data helps liquidity providers, arbitrageurs, and protocol teams stay ahead of volume shifts and usage spikes in the long and short term.