Optimism airdrops 19.4m of free OP tokens
The Ethereum scaling protocol allocated $26.7 million in free coins to wallets that delegated their OP tokens to community votes and on-chain governance.
Layer-2 network Optimism airdropped 19.4 million of its native token OP to 31,879 unique addresses with on-chain participation between January and July 2023.
These wallets either delegated OP above the minimum threshold or delegated voting power to an address that voted on-chain at least once, according to Optimism’s eligibility criteria.
The free tokens serve as a reward for “positive sum governance participation”, Optimism wrote. Also, the airdrop is claimless and requires no action from users.
Optimism urged vigilance from network participants to avoid losses to phishing scams.
“Airdrop #3 is disbursed directly to eligible wallets. There is no need to claim tokens by interacting with any website. Do not trust any website pretending to help you claim your tokens for Airdrop #3. If an address is eligible, it will have tokens sent directly to it on or shortly after Sept. 15, 2023.”
Optimism on X
The protocol operates in a competitive layer-2 market following its mainnet launch in December 2021.
Later, in June 2022, OP debuted with a 200 million token airdrop to early adopters. The protocol’s “Airdrop #2” disbursed another 11.7 million OP tokens to users in February 2023.
Optimism pledged 19% of its initial token supply to community rewards and free tokens in the form of airdrop.
At press time, the scaling network boasted the sixth-largest total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi).
Users have locked roughly $650 million in the network, according to DeFiLlama. Only Ethereum, Tron, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Arbitrum, and Polygon feature greater TVLs.
In July 2023, Optimism overtook fellow layer-2 blockchain Arbitrum in daily transactions.
The protocol also released a developers kit called OP Stack for building layer-2 blockchains. Coinbase-incubated network Base was built using Optimism’s solution. Binance also tapped OP Stack for its opBNB chain.
