Optimum Targets Ethereum Mainnet Launch Within Two Months

“Speed is money. Optimum delivers that speed to users.”

“Optimum is fundamentally a high-speed network,” Kent Lin, the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said in an interview with Bloomingbit on April 24. He said the project can connect to any blockchain and speed up data movement. “This is not just an application. It is a very foundational technology.”

Optimum is a blockchain project founded in 2024 by Muriel Medard, an MIT professor and the company’s chief executive officer, Lin, and Kishori Konwar, a former Meta research data scientist who serves as chief technology officer. Lin joined Optimum while attending Harvard Business School and later dropped out. He said many durable long-term projects start in academia and described Optimum as a company with the technology to push the blockchain industry forward.

RLNC Delivers Sixfold Speed Increase

At the core of Optimum’s technology is Random Linear Network Coding, or RLNC, developed by Medard. The technology breaks data into multiple pieces, applies random coefficients to each fragment and combines them linearly. Optimum says RLNC can preserve data resilience and reliability even when blockchain networks are unstable, helping accelerate information transfer. In internal tests with global validator companies, applying RLNC to the Ethereum network improved data transmission speeds by more than six times versus existing methods, according to the company.

Lin said RLNC could be as transformative as large language models. As tokenization of traditional finance assets such as stocks and commodities accelerates, on-chain traffic will surge and increase the burden on existing blockchains, he said. RLNC is designed to address that traffic load. He described Optimum as a “data acceleration layer” that did not previously exist in the blockchain industry and said the company currently faces no meaningful competitors in the category.

That potential helped Optimum raise an $11 million seed round in April 2025. The round was led by crypto venture capital firm 1kx, with participation from Robot Ventures, CMT Digital and Spartan Capital.

Seeks to Expand Partnerships in South Korea

A pilot service launched on the Ethereum testnet in April 2025 is also progressing steadily. Lin said the top 10 Ethereum validators are all partnered with Optimum and participating in the testnet. The company has completed 12 upgrades over the past year to advance the service. It plans to support the service on the Ethereum mainnet within one to two months. After focusing on the mainnet launch in the second quarter, Optimum plans to shift its focus to monetization in the third quarter.

Lin also outlined the company’s expansion strategy. Over the next few years, Optimum aims to expand beyond Ethereum to blockchains including BNB Chain and Solana. Its customer base could also broaden beyond validators to include decentralized finance users and professional investors. Expanding the product lineup, supported blockchains and customer segments will be central to Optimum’s growth strategy over the next five years, he said.

South Korea is a strategic market for Optimum, Lin said. The company is already working with local blockchain infrastructure firms including B-Harvest and Cosmostation. “The Korean community matters, so we are paying close attention,” he said. The company also plans to seek broader partnerships with South Korean big tech companies and financial institutions.