Optimism to unlock $56 million in tokens today, OP slides 2%

Ethereum layer 2 blockchain Optimism is set to unlock $56 million worth of OP tokens today. Ahead of the anticipated increase in supply, the price of OP is down 2% to $1.76 over the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows.

According to data from Token Unlocks, Optimism’s upcoming unlock will distribute over 31 million OP tokens, equivalent to nearly 3% of the circulating supply, to the project’s investors and core contributors. The project has unlocked around 1.13 billion tokens so far, equivalent to over 26% of its total supply.

At current prices, the unlock will see more than $56 million worth of OP tokens hit the market, with $30 million going to core contributors and $26 million set aside for investors.

The token release is part of a broader strategy across crypto projects, where tokens are gradually made available to prevent market flooding. In general, such events can create uncertainty in the market as more tokens become available, potentially impacting the price.

Optimism’s previous token unlock on May 31 resulted in a slight decline across all OP trading pairs, although the price recovered slightly by over 2% the following week, according to CoinGecko.

Earlier this month, OP Labs, the development team behind Optimism, announced the launch of permissionless fault proofs on the Optimism mainnet, a milestone for the project as it moves closer to its goal of a decentralized network.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin refers to permissionless fault proofs as “Stage 1.” These proofs allow for the secure withdrawal of ETH and ERC-20 tokens without relying on any centralized authority. Additionally, any user can challenge and remove invalid withdrawals and earn a reward for doing so.

“Launching fault proofs on OP Mainnet… and achieving Stage 1 decentralization are important milestones, but the endgame is Stage 2 decentralization,” Optimism said.