Institutions no longer ask whether they should go onchain. Instead, they ask how to do it under their own rules. Karl Floersch, co-founder and chief scientist at OP Labs, watches that shift from the center of the industry. His team helped shape the optimistic rollup design, and more than 50 production chains now run on the OP Stack. Floersch recently spoke with Genfinity founder Ryan Solomon about chain ownership, compliance, interoperability, and post-quantum security. Throughout the conversation, he argued that the research phase has ended and the deployment phase has begun.
⚡️ Exclusive Interview: Scaling Ethereum on Optimism As financial institutions move onchain, tokenization is becoming a core infrastructure capability. Optimism Co-founder and OP Labs Chief Scientist Karl Floersch discusses how Optimism is providing institutions with the controls needed to operate at scale across different regulatory environments. More than 50 production chains now use the OP Stack. @OPLabsPBC | @Optimism | @karl_dot_tech Full conversation with Karl Floersch:
— Generation Infinity (@Genfinity) October 13, 2026
From a Uniswap Scaling Problem to a Production Design
Floersch began his career as a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. The early Optimism co-founders worked closely together inside that community. Notably, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams was also Floersch’s college roommate. As Uniswap grew, the team needed a layer two that could support it.
Floersch described a long cycle of Plasma-era designs. Each time, the team asked Adams whether the design would support Uniswap. Eventually, they found one that scaled the EVM, stayed decentralized, and offered a fast user experience through a single sequencer. Floersch called that outcome a blessing. He said few researchers get to “hone your research to actually solving a real-world problem.”
Why Companies Want Their Own Chains
Floersch said the Optimism founders did not expect every company to want a chain. In hindsight, however, he finds the logic simple. Companies want their own websites and servers because they want control, customization, and differentiation. Chains follow the same pattern, as long as they still share communication protocols with other chains.
Sony offers a clear example. Floersch noted that Sony runs an OP Stack chain. He added that most institutions do not start there. Even receiving tokens in a wallet can create heavy regulatory and compliance work. As a result, firms first explore onchain technology, then ask how to bring users onchain, and then reach a product requirements list. That list often includes customized user experiences, compliance built into the core protocol, and control over infrastructure. Only after that analysis, Floersch said, do firms conclude they cannot proceed without their own chain.
He also drew a line between past and present. In earlier crypto cycles, projects launched chains as a status symbol. Floersch said those days are over. Today, he argued, “a chain is a means to delivering that value.”
The EVM Stays, and Scaling Enters a Specialized Era
Floersch admitted that Ethereum Foundation researchers wanted to replace the EVM in 2017. They saw many flaws. Over time, however, adoption changed the picture. The EVM lets developers compose lending markets, automated market makers, and other financial products with relative ease. Floersch said the virtual machine has now “hit escape velocity.”
He described three eras of scaling. First came a bespoke era of designs that tried to scale in different ways. Next came a standardization era, in which optimistic rollups that support the EVM became the common approach. Now the industry enters a specialized era. OP Stack chains began as largely uniform deployments. Today, they add custom block building policies, ordering rules, and precompiles. Floersch expects privacy and scalability needs to revive some older scaling ideas on top of the optimistic rollup base.
Compliance and Privacy Define the Institutional Roadmap
Floersch said demand for tokenization has surged as regulatory clarity improves. For years, the industry repeated that everything would be tokenized while little actually was. Now the benefits are plain to him. Tokenized assets connect to other systems, support new products, and enable more efficient lending. Therefore, the open question has shifted to how firms tokenize while meeting compliance, security, and privacy requirements.
No single regulator sets one standard, so institutions need customizable tools. Floersch called private transactions table stakes for large financial firms. He pointed to Privacy Boost on OP Mainnet as one example of that work.
Korea supplies the main proof points. On September 21, KB Securities, Securitize, and the Optimism Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding to build tokenized products for institutional clients. The first products include tokenized money market funds and a fund built on KB Asset Management strategies, with settlement on OP Mainnet. Separately, Optimism signed a memorandum with Toss operator Viva Republica and Sunnyside Labs. That three-month proof of concept tests a won-pegged stablecoin for an app serving up to 30 million users. Floersch said Toss has completed a full payment cycle on OP Mainnet.
Retail products also matter to him. He said EtherFi has 100,000 active cardholders who transact on OP Mainnet rails. Meanwhile, he dismissed the old idea that everyone would download MetaMask and approve hex-encoded pop-ups. “That was just wrong,” he said, adding that agents may manage that experience better than people.
Interoperability Still Carries Compromises
Floersch said every part of the stack follows value. He noted that applications today already hide chain boundaries from users. However, true interoperability without compromises does not exist yet. Ideally, every chain could pull information and value from any other chain. Chains could also transact atomically, such as liquidating a lending position against a pool on another chain.
Today, fragmentation remains. OP Labs launched OP Enterprise to make chain deployment easier. It offers three tiers: fully managed, self managed, and OP Mainnet. Even so, Floersch said launching a chain costs more than it should. Each new chain also fragments liquidity. In his view, institutions should not have to choose between sovereign blockspace and access to shared liquidity. He said the industry has worked on that goal for about ten years and still has a way to go.
Preparing for Post-Quantum Security
Floersch said he discussed post-quantum cryptography with Ethereum researcher Justin Drake as early as 2017. Back then, the work focused on architecture. Now, he said, quantum computing is “much more of an imminent decision,” although it remains years away. The challenge has become one of community coordination, since users must adopt a new signing standard.
No algorithm has universal consensus yet. Therefore, Floersch said the industry builds for fast migration instead. Smart contract wallets with pluggable signing schemes can swap in whichever scheme wins out. He also described a roadmap of about ten years that deprecates known insecure signatures. Bitcoin, in his view, will be the community to watch because of its commitment to avoiding change.
Outlook
Floersch pointed to the next few months as a period of deeper institutional commitment. His team plans to build a more sophisticated platform for customizing blockspace. He also expects progress on interoperability. Above all, he wants to see real users on real products.
Floersch acknowledged that onchain finance remains early. Solomon noted that well under one percent of the world uses crypto daily. Floersch agreed and answered with a point about growth. “The thing about exponentials is you start at less than one percent and you grow big pretty fast,” he said.
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