• Optimism (OP) distributed 11.7 million OP tokens to active ecosystem users who have delegated the voting power of their OP tokens and spent more than $6.10 on layer 2 gas since March 25, 2022.
• The news caused a significant drop in the value of OP tokens which had gone up 250% since the start of 2021.
• Optimism plans to do more airdrops in the future to experiment & iterate on this ever-evolving mechanism.

Optimism’s Second Airdrop

Optimism (OP) surprised its users with a second airdrop on Thursday, allocating 11.7 million OP tokens to those that have delegated the voting power of their OP tokens and spent more than $6.10 on layer 2 gas since March 25, 2022. A snapshot of the airdrop was taken on January 20, 2023 and eligible users don’t need to claim their tokens as they’ve been sent straight to their wallets.

Reaction To The Airdrop News

The news caused a significant drop in the value of OP tokens which had gone up 250% since the start of 2021, going from $0.913 at the start of the year to an all-time high of $3.19 on February 3rd according to data from CoinGecko, before dropping by almost 9% following the announcement about the second airdrop and currently trading at around $2.37 with 15% lost over 7 days period .

Unlock Schedule

Industry observers have pointed out that OP has one of the worst unlock schedules in 2023 as only around 214 million OP tokens out of 4 billion are currently in circulation while around 5 million worth is being emitted daily adding pressure for further price decreases .

Future Airdrops

Optimism stressed that it’s going to do more airdrops in order to further facilitate positive-sum behavior in its ecosystem so it’s never too late for users to participate .

Conclusion

Optimism continues its journey towards scaling Ethereum network with multiple initiatives like these two successful airdrops but investors should be aware about bad unlock schedule it has with most of its token locked until 2023 .