Optimism Sells $162 Million Worth of OP Tokens to 7 Investment Funds
Optimism, the layer-2 solution on Ethereum, has unexpectedly announced a private sale of OP tokens totaling $162 million.
Optimism sells $162 million worth of OP tokens to 7 investment funds
According to the latest update posted by OP Mainnet (Optimism) on social media, the Ethereum layer-2 project conducted an impromptu private sale of OP tokens to raise additional funds.
Optimism plans to sell 160 million OP tokens, constituting 3.7% of the total supply and 20% of the circulating supply, valued at $162.4 million at the time of writing, to 7 undisclosed participants for the purpose of "Treasury fund management." The identities of these investment funds have not been disclosed.
Starting today, there will be several transactions totaling approximately 116M OP tokens. We’re sharing as a heads up to our community that these are planned transactions.
— Optimism (@Optimism) September 20, 2023
The funds raised will be locked up for a period of 2 years. However, the funds can delegate the OP tokens purchased to external entities outside of the deal to participate in governance on Optimism.
The OP tokens sold in this private sale are allocated to Optimism's Treasury fund. Responding to community inquiries, the project affirmed that the private sale was planned in advance. Optimism stated it will commence fund transfer transactions immediately and notified the community beforehand to avoid confusion.
This is why DAOs are fucked, they don't even make an effort to obey their own rules$OP is going the same way as $ARB
— Wazz (@WazzCrypto) September 21, 2023
Z E R O https://t.co/xkgGqrUqoh pic.twitter.com/9efaY0hMCy
However, rather than proposing the sale for discussion under decentralized governance principles, Optimism decided to proceed with the token sale first and then inform the community. When questioned about the identities of the token buyers, the project declined to disclose them.
The price of OP tokens showed minimal fluctuation following the news of Optimism's $162 million token sale.
4-hour chart of OP/USDT pair on Binance as of 04:55 AM on September 21, 2023
This marks Optimism's fourth significant move related to OP tokens within just one week. On September 16, the layer-2 solution announced the distribution of the remaining 48 million OP tokens from the June 2022 airdrop to eligible but unclaimed wallet addresses.
Announcement 🚨
— Optimism Governance (@OptimismGov) September 15, 2023
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.
On September 19, Optimism conducted its third airdrop, allocating 19.4 million OP tokens to over 31,000 participating wallet addresses.
Today Optimism is announcing OP Airdrop #3.
— Optimism (@Optimism) September 18, 2023
19M OP allocated to over 31k unique addresses to reward positive-sum governance participation in the Collective.
Read on for details on eligibility criteria and allocations.
Just on September 20, the project further announced a $30 million OP token sponsorship round aimed at boosting development within the Optimism ecosystem.
Applications for RetroPGF Round 3 are open!
— Optimism (@Optimism) September 19, 2023
In this round 30M OP will be allocated to the builders, artists, creators, and educators who have demonstrated their impact in building the Optimism Collective.
Sign up now: https://t.co/X9BEPzuqap
