Optimism transfers 546.9 million OP airdrop reserves to the strategic fund

Optimism governance has approved a proposal to transfer 546.9 million OP tokens (valued at approximately $49.7 million at the time of voting) originally reserved for future user airdrops to a strategic ecosystem fund managed by the Optimism Foundation. This move cancels the remaining dedicated airdrop pool and authorizes the foundation to use the tokens for collaborative transactions, incentives, and other initiatives to promote the growth of OP Mainnet and OP Enterprise. The proposal clearly states that there are currently no additional airdrop plans, and the tokens distributed in Airdrop 1 to 5 are unaffected.

On-chain voting ultimately passed with 17.974 million OP in support and 10.931 million against. The core development team Test in Prod cast 8.486 million OP in favor about 17 minutes before the end of voting, raising the support rate from 45.77% to 61.84%; without that vote, the support rate would have been only 46.47%. The team claims to be fully funded by the Optimism Collective and has been involved in the development of OP Stack execution clients, network upgrades, and fault proofs since 2022.

The Foundation stated that it has distributed 269.1 million OP through five airdrops, but broad user acquisition no longer aligns with the current institutional strategy. The new fund can support transactions related to chains, protocols, institutions, and infrastructure, as well as incentives for OP Mainnet activities and liquidity. Some representatives believe the authorization is too broad, and the L2BEAT governance team is calling for clearer deployment expectations, evaluation methods, and success criteria. The foundation will update public token accounting and disclose cumulative deployment status in the annual budget report.