Optimism Foundation to Sell $89 Million in OP Tokens to Unknown Buyer

The Optimism Foundation, associated with the Ethereum-based layer-two network Optimism, plans to sell ~19.5 million governance tokens OP (~$89 million) in a private sale to an undisclosed buyer.

https://t.co/vviBFhmKH6

— 0xBoboShanti (@0xBoboShanti) March 7, 2024

The terms remain undisclosed.

The tokens will be locked for two years. The buyer will have the right to delegate OP to unaffiliated third parties for governance voting.

According to the announcement, the tokens will be drawn from the undistributed portion of the treasury. They are “part of the Optimism Foundation’s working budget, which constitutes 30% of the initial offering.”

The team has warned of upcoming transactions related to the deal in the coming days.

The initiative has sparked mixed reactions within the community. Notably, Anthony Sassano, founder of Daily Gwei, expressed skepticism.

I love Optimism and what they’re building (and I’m an angel investor in them) but private sales with zero transparency like this just leave a really bad taste in my mouth.

This is not the gwei https://t.co/Ic70Fih5ND

— sassal.eth/acc ?? (@sassal0x) March 8, 2024

“Private sales with zero transparency like this just leave a really bad taste in my mouth,” he noted.

The reaction from user 0xBoboShanti was sarcastic.

@Optimism have sold another 19.5m $OP.

A nice lil $90m or so to strengthen the treasury.

It’s not dumping if it’s a private sale.

Right? R…r…r…right? pic.twitter.com/di54vKHH0h

— 0xBoboShanti (@0xBoboShanti) March 7, 2024

“It’s not dumping if it’s a private sale. Right?” wrote the user.

The news did not impact OP’s price dynamics. According to CoinGecko, the asset fell by 0.3% over 24 hours.

Earlier in February, the Optimism team conducted a fourth airdrop to reward NFT creators both within the project’s ecosystem chains like Base or Zora and in the main Ethereum network.