Optimism Announces Airdrop of OP Token: What You Need to Know

Ethereum’s layer-two scaling solution Optimism introduced its new governance token OP for the Token House – one of the two hubs constituting the protocol’s new governance system, Optimism Collective. Early users of the network will be granted the opportunity to receive OP airdrops in Q2, 2022, which accounts for 5% of the asset’s total supply.

Optimism’s New Governance Body

According to the official blog post, the Collective’s bicameral governance system “aims to avoid governance pitfalls experienced by other models on Ethereum today.” To achieve such a goal, the initiative is divided into two houses, each focusing on different areas of governance.

The Token House, in which OP functions as the governance and incentive token, is responsible for protocol upgrades, network parameters, treasury funds, and project incentives. Meanwhile, the Citizen house will facilitate a process aimed at distributing retroactive public goods funding generated from network revenue.

An Optimism-native “citizenship” – in the form of NFTs – will also be granted to committee members. The blog post stated:

“These two houses will help direct the revenue generated from the Optimism L2 to efforts that promote public goods and help grow the collective.”

Also, unlike other protocols that do one-time airdrops, Optimism will allocate a whole season for such events. The layer-two protocol noted that more than 250,000 addresses are eligible for the Airdrop #1 going live in Q2, and the second will be announced in the coming weeks.

OP Tokenomics

The total supply of OP will be 4,294,967,296 tokens, which are distributed to the following categories.

• 20% will be used for retroactive public goods funding
• 25%will be reserved as ecosystem funds, including governance, partner, seed, and unallocated funds.
• 19% will be airdropped to eligible members.
• 17% and 19% will be given to investors and core contributors.

Investors and core contributors are subject to more extended lockup periods. Most of their tokens will be locked for at least two years, while community-held coins can be sold in the secondary market within the first year.