Ethereum Scaling Solution Optimism Airdrops Tokens to 249K Wallets

Optimism, a popular layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, today launched the anticipated airdrop of its new OP governance token, rewarding early users of the project and other select Ethereum users by sending free tokens to nearly 249,000 eligible wallets.

The airdrop was first revealed in April, when Optimism announced plans to launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) alongside the OP token, which holders can use to vote within the community. The DAO plans to use revenue from Optimism transaction fees to fund grants designed for “public goods,” such as open-source software.

Optimism is providing tokens to wallets that used the network before June 23, 2021, with additional tokens offered to repeat users, those who participated in DAO governance on Ethereum, people who have donated to public goods funding platform Gitcoin, and others. Future airdrops are planned.

Ethereum scaling solutions enable faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient transactions than are currently possible on Ethereum’s own mainnet. In the case of Optimism, all of the transactions conducted on its blockchain platform are rolled up into large batches and then committed to Ethereum’s network via a single transaction.

“We have NOT officially announced yet, but we’re already experiencing an all-time high demand,” the official Optimism account tweeted at 3:10pm ET. “We knew everyone would be excited, but holy cow — y’all just couldn’t wait for #OPSummer.”

Optimism’s airdrop was preceded by tweets from crypto exchanges such as OKX and AAX noting that they will support the OP token. While the airdrop is already technically underway, many users have been unable to claim their tokens due to immense demand.

Some users on Twitter have claimed that they were listed as eligible for the airdrop earlier, but now they are shown as ineligible. Optimism tweeted that it is working to spin up additional server capacity before making an official announcement about the airdrop redemption process.

Optimism’s DAO initiative is called The Optimism Collective, and spans two “houses.” The “Citizens’ House” is focused on the aforementioned public goods, while the “Token House” will govern things like software upgrades, Optimism’s incentive structure, and future software upgrades.

Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin, praised Optimism’s plans to fund public goods—akin to Gitcoin’s own focus—in comments to Decrypt. He noted Optimism’s long support of Gitcoin ahead of including backers in this airdrop.

"Optimism is widely known for their role in helping scale Ethereum with their L2, but what is less known is their deep ethos alignment and financial support for ecosystem public goods,” he said. “Back in the heart of the 2019 bear market, the Optimism team gave $100,000 in support for Gitcoin Grants at a time in which no one else would.”

“Today, they are a large supporter of Retroactive Public Goods—a scalable and effective way of distributing public goods funding to the ecosystem,” Owocki continued. “The public goods ethos is strong with the Optimism team and I’m glad to see this extended to the DAO."