Optimism to Unlock $583M Worth of OP, Doubling Token Supply
- The initial vesting period for early investors and contributors of Optimism is about to end on 31 May, an event that will double the circulating supply of OP tokens.
- The event is raising concerns about the future price of the token, considering seed investors Paradigm and IDEO are sitting on a potential profit of more than 10,000%.
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Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol Optimism is about to unlock more than 386 million Optimism (OP) tokens, valued at $583 million at current prices, as the initial vesting period for early investors comes to an end.
Scheduled for 31 May, this will be one of the largest token unlock events that will happen in 2023, considering that it will increase the circulating supply of OP — which currently sits at around 335 million tokens — by more than double. This significant increase in the tokens available on the market is raising concerns about a potential drop in the price of the token, which has fallen by about 7% in the last 24 hours.
Tokens that are allocated to early-stage investors and major development contributors are usually frozen for a designated period of time, after which they are released in similar unlock events. Crypto companies take this measure in order to ensure that there are no large token sales during periods of low liquidity, which is usually in the early life of their project.
This concern stems from the fact that many early-stage investors averaged a buy-in price of approximately $0.24 per token, meaning they are sitting on gains of more than 500%. Seed investors such as venture capital firm Paradigm and IDEO CoLab Ventures, however, have seen their initial investment grow by more than 10,000%, considering they purchased OP at $0.015 per token back in December 2020.
- Coinbase’s protocol security team and over 100 external security researchers were involved with testing the upcoming layer 2 Base blockchain over the past six months.
- The project said it has now completed four out of five criteria for Base’s mainnet launch, with the remaining one being to demonstrate “testnet stability”.
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- Blockchain security firm CertiK warned that the team behind Kokomo Finance have executed a rug pull on Sunday, and stolen around $4 million in user funds.
- The website and social media accounts of the Optimism-based crypto lender have all been deleted, while its KOKO native token fell by more than 98%.
- Coinbase has launched the testnet for its own layer-2 network Base, which was designed to be low-cost, open-source, and provide a developer-friendly environment.
- The exchange also revealed it will be joining Optimism as a core developer on the open-source “OP Stack”, which Base was built on top of.