After the surprise altcoin airdrop, the value of the OP token decreased as more supply came to the market.
This altcoin performed a surprise airdrop
Optimism Network conducted a surprise token airdrop on Thursday, sending 11.7 million governance tokens to over 300,000 wallets, according to a blog post by Optimism Collective, the watchdog group of the Layer 2 blockchain.
Optimism’s airdrop is part of blockchain’s attempt to distribute 19% of its initial governance token supply, as blockchain creates a path towards wider adoption. Optimism distributed 5% of its initial governance token supply, or more than 200 million tokens, in its first airdrop last May.
The airdrop comes as it seeks an edge over Optimism’s biggest rival, Arbitrum. Abritrum boasts of having more than double the amount of wallets currently trading as Optimism, widening the gap between the two exchanges’ trading wallets last month.
According to Optimism, a total of 11,742,277.10 OP tokens ($28.5 million) were sent to 307,965 unique addresses. Optimism said the OP token allocations are designed to reward users based on the amount of OP authorized and serve as a partial gas refund.
Transactions are entitled
Users who spend gas to process transactions on the blockchain are eligible for the airdrop. The Optimism Network considers the sharing of voting powers to be ‘positive aggregate activity’ to support the blockchain’s governance system.
According to cryptokoin.com data, the OP token dropped 13% on news that Optimism’s circulating supply has increased. Despite this, the OP has rallied about 200% over the past few weeks. However, after the airdrop announcement, the token price dropped 13%. At the time of publication, the token is trading at roughly $2.35.
Thursday’s unannounced airdrop went relatively smoothly, unlike Optimism’s first attempt in July 2022 when users had to manually claim their shares. In this case, the distribution was automatic. Optimism introduced the OP token to fuel its bicameral governance system through 214 million token requests suitable for a total of 231,000 addresses in May 2022.
Additional multipliers were applied to certain accounts that delegated more than 20 OPs during the snapshot, or that delegated 54,367 OPs for a given number of days. Those who made app transactions on the network for six months or spent more than $20 in gas fees were also eligible for multipliers.
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