On Tuesday, Optimism announced that it would launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called The Optimism Collective. The DAO will govern the layer-2 Optimism Network, as well as the development of its Ethereum-adjacent ecosystem.
Optimism looks to use its newfound Collective to “increase the utility” of its chain (presumably via new projects and protocols) and increase “demand for OP blockspace”, which will go to funding more projects and “public goods.”
And with every new DAO comes a new token… and an airdrop, it seems.
The story is no different here. Optimism is launching the $OP token as part of its DAO rollout and restructuring. In the first airdrop, 5% of the OP token supply will be doled out to 264,079 early adopters and active Ethereum users. How much $OP each address or user gets will be decided based on a number of criteria. The date of the airdrop has not yet been announced.
There are fair odds that none of our readers will be lucky enough to get some of that sweet new $OP token. However, the Optimism team claims that this will be the first of “many airdrops.” According to the DAO’s governance page, as much as 19% of the initial $OP token supply will be allocated to airdrops, which means there could be some alpha waiting for users who become Optimism users in the months ahead.
If Optimism sounds completely foreign to you… don’t worry, you’re not alone. The lesser-known Ethereum-adjacent network exists to help users bridge their assets off of the very-expensive Ethereum network. By doing so, users can take advantage of Optimism’s patently-lower fees and faster transaction times. These are made possible thanks to the very imaginatively-named Optimistic rollups, a piece of technology which helps speed up Ethereum transactions.
That said, if you’re already an Ethereum user and meddle in DeFi (or want to get started), Optimism might be a good place to jump in. Ethereum is still the base-asset of the Optimism chain, meaning there are no new tokens or gas fees you have to acquire. You can just bridge Ethereum to get started. Jump in and read more about how to get started on Optimism’s website or see where money is stewing in Optimism DeFi on Coindix.com. Unfortunately for you NFT lovers, there’s little exciting about Optimism’s NFT ecosystem… but maybe that’ll change.
We’ll report on how successful the launch of the $OP is, and to what extent these new financial circumstances motivate development in the sphere of Optimism — as of today, it boasts over a $450.6 million in Total Value Locked (TVL) according to DeFi Llama.