• Optimism airdropped 11.7 million OP tokens to active ecosystem users
• OP token reacted negatively, going down by 9% following the airdrop announcement
• Despite the decline in price, OP’s remains one of the best performing tokens since the start of 2021
Optimism Airdrops Second Round of Tokens
Optimism surprised its users with a second airdrop on Thursday, allocating 11.7 million OP tokens to those who have delegated their voting power and spent over $6.10 on layer 2 gas since March 25, 2022. The snapshot for the airdrop was taken on January 20, 2023 and all eligible addresses have already received their tokens without needing to claim them. The team behind Optimism also said that more airdrops are planned in the future.
OP Token Price Reacted Negatively
Following the announcement of the second airdrop, Optimism’s governance token OP sunk significantly – dropping 9% from its 24-hour high of $2.54 to $2.32 according to data from CoinGecko. It is currently trading at around $2.37, having gone down around 15% in the last seven days despite being one of 2021’s best performing tokens so far – increasing 250% from just under $1 at start of year to an all time high of $3.19 on February 3rd this year.
Unlock Schedule for 2023
TokenUnlocks states that only 214 million out of 4 billion total supply is currently in circulation for OP and an additional 5 million worth is emitted daily until December 2024 as per unlock schedule which could be considered unfavorable compared to other projects with much quicker unlock schedules or no unlock schedules at all such as Polkadot’s DOT or Cardano’s ADA respectively .
Positive-Sum Behavior Through Airdrops
The team behind Optimism has suggested that multiple airdrops will help facilitate positive-sum behavior within its ecosystem due to allowing them experiment and iterate on this ever evolving mechanism while incentivizing users with more rewards too late comers can still participate even after they were not eligible for previous ones as long as they meet criteria set by project itself .