The Block: Optimism’s governance token OP officially goes live

The governance token for the rollup-based Layer 2 network Optimism has gone live.

The token is set to shift Optimism’s structure by fueling The Optimism Collective, a bicameral governance system for funding composed of Token House and Citizens’ House. The token will trade under the ticker OP and be distributed via airdrop to early users.

Individuals who used Optimism before March 25 can claim an airdrop of OP. A total of 231,000 addresses can claim 214 million OP tokens (5% of the total 4.29 billion supply). The claim process has now officially begun.

Today’s airdrop fleshes out Token House so that OP holders can vote on Optimism-centric projects. Citizens’ House comes later in 2022 after the establishment of Token House, in which Citizens’ House facilitates and governs funding for projects aimed at promoting the public good.

Exchanges such as OKX, LBank, MEXC and AAX have stated that they’ll list OP at various points on May 31.

Rumors of Optimism’s governance token emerged after individuals spotted the OP token page on Coinbase on April 20, The Block previously reported. Optimism then laid out its plans for OP and The Optimism Collective on April 26.

Today's event represents the first OP airdrop and an additional 14% of its overall supply has been reserved for future airdrops. Besides the airdrop to early adopters, a portion of OP supply will be distributed to projects operating on Optimism. More airdrops will occur throughout Q2.

As a Layer 2 initiative, Optimism aims to allow apps to achieve faster and cheaper transactions than on the Ethereum blockchain. According to data from The Block, Optimism hosts over $600 million in total value locked across apps like Synthetix, Uniswap, Perpetual Protocol, Lyra, Curve and Aave.