Optimism Tokens Claimed by Some Users Ahead of Official Airdrop Announcement

The Ethereum scaling system’s long-awaited airdrop is expected to go live on Tuesday, but some users were able to jump in early.

AccessTimeIconMay 31, 2022 at 6:44 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 4:37 p.m. UTC
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Ethereum scaling system Optimism’s hotly anticipated airdrop is expected to officially go live on Tuesday, but some users have already been able to claim the tokens.

In the project’s Discord channel, a moderator from the Optimism team said some users were able to claim the OP tokens on Tuesday by directly interacting with the smart contract while the team was still in the process of testing the airdrop functionality.

According to a blog post authored by Optimism last month, the anticipated airdrop was expected to be the first in “an entire season of airdrops.” The Optimism team did not disclose the dates of the airdrops.

However, several people with knowledge of the matter told CoinDesk that Optimism’s first airdrop would take place on Tuesday. It is unclear whether the unanticipated early claims would delay such plans.

As of press time, Optimism’s official Twitter account had not yet announced the launch of the airdrop.

“The claim is not ready,” said Discord user Billy161, a member of the Optimism team. “We are provisioning infrastructure to handle the insane load that a token launch brings. Our announcement got [frontrun] by centralized exchanges going rogue, which has created a frenzy.”

Crypto exchange OKX announced it would officially start trading Optimism’s OP/USDT and OP/USDC pairs at 6:15 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a blog post earlier Tuesday.

Airdrop snafu

On Twitter, Optimism users expressed frustration that certain parties had been able to claim tokens before others and worried the early trading would affect the price of the token.

Other users expressed frustration that the site changed their status to "ineligible" despite previously indicating they would be eligible for the airdrop.

According to Optimism’s airdrop white paper, the first airdrop is intended to reward users who have been “instrumental as early adopters and active users of projects in the Optimism ecosystem.”

In total, 248,699 addresses are eligible to claim Optimism’s OP tokens in this initial airdrop, according to the white paper.

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Tracy Wang

Tracy was the deputy managing editor at CoinDesk. She owns BTC, ETH, MINA, ENS and some NFTs.


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