Optimism’s governance token officially goes live

Layer 2s and Scaling • May 31, 2022, 1:47PM EDT

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.

About Authors

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

Vishal Chawla is The Block’s crypto ecosystems editor and has spent over six years covering tech protocols, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Vishal likes to delve deep into blockchain intricacies to ensure readers are well-informed about the continuously evolving crypto landscape. He is also a staunch advocate for rigorous security practices in the space. Before joining The Block, Vishal held positions at IDG ComputerWorld, CIO, and Crypto Briefing. He can be reached on Twitter at @vishal4c and via email at [email protected]