Optimism is experimenting with stake-based transaction ordering, offering OP holders a way to speed up execution on its network.
Layer-2 network Optimism is testing a new way to decide who gets to the front of the line.
According to an X thread on Thursday, April 16, OP staking can now unlock top-of-block positioning for transactions. That gives OP stakers a better shot at faster execution on OP Mainnet.
It also marks the first change to transaction ordering in the chain’s history. The test is already live on Sepolia, Ethereum’s testnet, with a phased mainnet rollout planned.
- Right now, OP Mainnet works much like the rest of crypto, where users pay higher priority fees to get their transactions included faster.
- Optimism says that setup comes with trade-offs, including bots, spam and a higher rate of failed trades.
The new setup tries to change that. Instead of relying only on a priority gas auction, Optimism is letting stakers use OP as a kind of access pass to better transaction placement. In the meantime, non-staking users continue under the old fee-based system.
Amid the news, Optimism crypto price jumped 6% to $0.132, pushing its market cap to nearly $281 million, per data from CoinGecko.
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How New Crypto Model Works on Optimism
The test comes in two phases. In Phase 1, any address that stakes 100,000 OP (around $13,000 at current prices) qualifies for top-of-block access.
In Phase 2, things get a bit more layered. The system mixes how much OP is staked, how long it’s been staked, and the gas fee into one score to decide order, with the boost capped at 3x.
There’s also a small time bonus that maxes out at about 10% after two weeks, designed to make it harder to game with short-term borrowed tokens.
- Optimism emphasizes there are no lockups, so users can withdraw 100% of stake at any time.
As the team explains, the change is temporary and can be rolled back to the standard priority-fee model at any time. Still, for a network this active, even a limited test on who gets to the top of the block might not be a small tweak.
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