Optimism distributes unclaimed OP tokens worth $67 million

The Ethereum-layer-2 network Optimism (OP Mainnet) distributed unclaimed during the first airdrop 48 million native OP tokens ($67.2 million at the time of writing) among 88,000 eligible addresses.

Announcement ?

The remainder of unclaimed OP from Airdrop #1 is being distributed directly to eligible addresses.

If you were eligible for Airdrop #1, but you haven’t claimed your tokens yet, you will receive OP directly at your address.

— Optimism Governance (@OptimismGov) September 15, 2023

According to the dashboard on дашборда on Dune Analytics, as a result of the OP distribution, which began on June 1, 2022, users claimed roughly 166,000 tokens. This amounted to a little over 77% of the 215,000 OP reserved for the airdrop.

About a quarter of addresses eligible to receive the assets did not claim them. The developers sent the coins directly to them.

Some users raised concerns that this concerns wallets whose access has been lost or whose owners are dead. Thus, the distribution effectively removed part of the tokens from circulation, they say.

This distribution creates the following problem: those who lose their wallets will have their coins destroyed in that wallet. Everyone who knew that they were entitled to receive it made the claim and received their drop

— memorieseesee.fuel ???️?? ? mehmetin.lens (@mehmetin64) September 15, 2023

However, the team noted that distributing the remaining portion of the tokens will allow developers to focus on “other work on smart contracts and future airdrops.”

In total, under the transition to the new governance structure, the project pledged to distribute 19% of the total issuance of 4.29 billion OP among users.

As of writing, the native token price stands at $1.40 (CoinGecko). Over the past seven days OP has risen 10%, but trades about 56.6% below its all-time high of $3.22, set in February.

According to L2BEAT, the total value locked in the protocol amounts to $2.47 billion. By this metric, Optimism ranks second among L2 networks, more than twice behind Arbitrum.

As noted, the second airdrop of 11.7 million OP began in February.