How to buy Optimism (OP) securely

What is Optimism?

Design philosophy

Optimism is built on a strong design philosophy that rests on four main pillars: simplicity, pragmatism, sustainability and, of course, optimism. It is important to understand these pillars, as they greatly influence Optimism’s design as a whole.

#Simplicity

Optimism is designed to be as simple as possible for the feature set it offers. Ideally, Optimism should be composed of the minimum number of moving parts necessary for a secure, scalable and flexible L2 system. This simplicity gives the Optimism design a number of significant advantages over more complex L2 constructions.

Simplicity reduces engineering overhead, which in turn means we can spend our time working on new features rather than recreating existing ones. Optimism prefers to use proven Ethereum code and infrastructure where possible. The most visible example of this philosophy in practice is the choice to use Geth as Optimism’s client software.

When it comes to critical infrastructure, simplicity is also security. Every line of code we write is an opportunity to introduce unintended errors. A simple protocol means there is less code to write and therefore less surface area for potential errors. A clean, minimal code base is also more accessible to external contributors and auditors. All of this serves to maximize the security and correctness of the Optimism protocol.

Simplicity is also important to the long-term vision of Optimism. By limiting the amount of code we write on Ethereum tools, we can spend most of our time working directly with existing code bases. The engineering effort that goes into Optimism can also directly benefit Ethereum, and vice versa. This will become more pronounced as the Optimism protocol consolidates and existing resources can be redirected to Ethereum’s core infrastructure.

#Pragmatism.

Despite its idealism, Optimism’s design process is ultimately driven by pragmatism. The Optimism core team has real-world constraints, the projects that rely on Optimism have real-world needs, and the users that interact with Optimism have real-world problems. Optimism’s design philosophy prioritizes user and developer needs over theoretical perfection. Sometimes the best solution is not the prettiest.

Optimism is also developed with the understanding that any core team will have limited areas of expertise. Optimism is developed iteratively and strives to continually obtain user feedback. Many of the core features of Optimism today (such as EVM Equivalency (opens new window)) were only made possible by this iterative approach to protocol development.

#Sustainability

Optimism is in it for the long haul. Application developers need to be assured that the platform they are building on will remain not only operational but also competitive over long periods of time. Optimism’s design process is based on the idea of long-term sustainability and not taking shortcuts to scalability. After all, a scalable system means nothing without the ecosystem that supports it.

Sustainability actively influences the design of Optimism’s protocols in a way that goes hand in hand with our philosophy of simplicity. The more complex a code base is, the more difficult it is for people outside the core development team to actively contribute. By keeping our code base simple we are able to build a larger community of contributors who can help maintain the protocol over the long term.

Optimism

Of course, none of this would be possible without a sense of optimism. Our optimism about Ethereum’s vision keeps this project moving forward. We believe in an optimistic future for Ethereum, a future where we can redesign our relationships with the institutions that coordinate our lives.

Although Optimism looks like a standalone blockchain, it is ultimately designed as an extension of Ethereum. We keep this in mind whenever we create new features or try to simplify existing ones. Optimism is as close as possible to Ethereum not only for pragmatic reasons, but because Optimism exists so that Ethereum can succeed. We hope you can see the influence of this philosophy by looking at the design of Optimism.

Rollup Protocol

We’ve covered most of the “why” behind Optimism. Now it’s time to explain the big idea that makes Optimism possible: the Optimistic Rollup. We’ll do a brief explanation of how Optimistic Rollups work at a high level. Then we’ll explain why Optimism is built as an Optimistic Rollup and why we think it’s the best choice for a system that addresses all of our design goals.

#Optimism Rollups TL;DR

Optimism is an Optimistic Rollup, which is basically a fancy way of describing a blockchain that relies on the security of another “parent” blockchain. Specifically, Optimistic Rollups leverage the consensus mechanism (such as PoW or PoS) of their parent blockchain instead of providing their own. In the case of Optimism, this parent blockchain is Ethereum.