Optimism Foundation to sell $89 million worth of OP tokens in private sale to unknown buyer

Optimism Foundation, which supports the Ethereum Layer 2 project Optimism, said it is privately selling approximately 19.5 million governance tokens — valued at over $89 million at current prices.

The terms of the private sale and the identity of the buyer have not been disclosed.

The tokens will be subject to a lockup period of two years, according to an official announcement, but the purchaser will still be able to delegate tokens to unaffiliated third parties for governance votes. "Optimism has entered into a private token sale of approximately 19.5M OP tokens," the announcement posted on Optimism's governance forum read. 

The project claims "the tokens come from the unallocated portion of the OP token treasury, and are part of the Foundation's original working budget of 30% of the initial OP token supply."

Optimism also notified that several transactions related to the private sale will occur in the coming days. 

This was not the first time the foundation revealed a private token sale. It sold 116 million OP tokens in September 2023, valued at over $160 million at the time.

'Bad taste'

The news of the latest OP private sale has not been universally well-received by the wider Ethereum community.

The Daily Gwei founder Anthony Sassano shared his opinion that "private sales with zero transparency like this just leave a really bad taste in my mouth" on X.

Another X user sarcastically claimed: "It's not dumping if it's a private sale. Right?"

Despite some unfavorable opinions, the price of Optimism's OP token is up nearly 3% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block's price data.