Token Distribution Details

According to the official documentation of OP Allocations, there will be an initial total supply of 4,294,967,296 OP tokens at genesis. The total token supply will inflate at a rate of 2% per year.

64% of the initial token supply (i.e., the aggregate amount of OP not reserved for core contributors or sugar Xaddies) will be distributed to the community as described above. These distributions will be administered over time by the Optimism Foundation in its role as steward of the Optimism Collective.

In Year 1, 30% of the initial token supply will be made available to the Foundation for distribution. After the first year, token holders will vote to determine the Foundation’s annual OP distribution budget. The Foundation expects to seek the following annual allocations:

• Year 2: 15% of the initial token supply
• Year 3: 10% of the initial token supply
• Year 4: 4% of the initial token supply

If the Foundation’s authorized OP expenditures ever reaches below 10% of the initial token supply, it is expected to request an additional allocation.

OP Allocations

The Optimism Foundation will distribute 19% of the total OP supply to members of the Optimism and Ethereum communities in multiple waves.

Airdrop #1

The first user airdrop will distribute 5% of the OP token supply. This airdrop is targeted towards people who behaved in positive-sum ways, contributed actively to their communities, and have been priced out of Ethereum. In total, around 250,000 addresses are eligible to claim nearly 215,000,000 OP in this initial airdrop.

Future Airdrops

An allocation of 14% of the OP token supply will be held in reserve for future user airdrops.

Introduction

Optimism is a low-cost and lightning-fast Ethereum L2 blockchain. Earlier this year, Optimism declared a Summer of Optimism heralded by the launch of the OP token. Apart from the parties involved in the initial distribution of the OP token, a portion of the total OP supply was airdropped to the community.

In this analysis, the airdrop #1 of the OP token and the behavior of eligible addresses toward their claimed tokens have been evaluated.

Methodology

The airdrop data were selected from the fact_token_transfers table of the Core schema of the Optimism database using the distributer address. To analyze the holding behavior of airdrop receivers, first the eligible addresses who claimed their OP airdrop were selected. Next, the amount of sent and received OP tokens to these addresses, including the airdrop, were calculated. Then, their holdings were measured by simply subtracting the sent amount from the received amount. Finally, these addresses were divided into three different categories based on their holdings. If the holdings was higher than the airdropped amount, it meant that not only the address held its OP, but also it added more tokens to its balance. If the holdings of the address was equal to the airdropped amount, it meant that the address was an idle wallet which neither add nor remove tokens from its holding. Ultimately, if the holdings of the address was less than the airdropped amount, it meant that the address sold or transferred its tokens and did not hold them for longer period. For the delegation, the data on the fact_delegations and fact_event_logs tables were used. The delegated amount was only available for the those who changed their delegation status. Although it was not inclusive to the majority of delegators, this data was measured and provided in this analysis.

Analysis

The overall analysis of the first airdrop has demonstrated that only 60% of the total eligible addresses have claimed nearly 74% of total allocated OP tokens since the start of the first airdrop wave. The majority of the available OP tokens were claimed during the first few days of the airdrop. Similarly, The majority of the eligible addresses claimed their tokens in the early days. In general, the number of claimers as well as the amount of claimed OP tokens dramatically dropped after only 10 days of the airdrop windows.

Holding Behavior

The majority of eligible addresses who claimed their OP tokens with a share of 88% have sold or traded their tokens. Interestingly, around 10% of the total claimers have not touched their tokens and hold them just as they were. The current holdings of this group has accounted for more than 50% of the total holdings. Last but not least, only less than 2% of the total claimers hold and add more OP tokens to their balance, which is responsible for around 25% of the current holdings.

Delegation

The analysis of OP delegation has demonstrated that the majority of airdrop claimers have delegated their OP tokens almost instantly. Nearly 85% of the total delegators have been first time delegator, around 11% of which delegated their OP tokens to themselves. The share of re-delegation has been around 10% of the total addresses and continues to increase. The analysis of daily number of delegators has indicated that as the time progress, the share of first time delegators decreased and the share of re-delegators increased.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of OP tokens first airdrop wave has demonstrated that a healthy portion of total eligible addresses claimed their tokens, especially during the first few days after the start of the program. The higher share of claimed OP tokens compared to the share of claimers shows that larger addresses claimed their tokens and the remaining ones are mostly small players in the ecosystem. The analysis of holding behavior of airdrop claimers has indicated that the majority of receivers has either sold or transferred their claimed OP tokens to other addresses. However, those who have not used their tokens, i.e. idle holders with the same balance as their claimed airdrops, as well as those who have added to their holdings are responsible around 75% of the total holdings among the claimers, which again shows that they are larger players compared to those who did not hold their tokens. Besides that, the delegation analysis has demonstrated that the majority of the claimers have delegated their claimed tokens for the first time. However, as the initial dominant wave passed, the share of these first timers has started to decrease. On the contrary, the share of re-delegators has increased over time with a higher number of delegators in recent days. The analysis of re-delegation has also emphasized on the difference between the player size of OP claimers. Those who delegated lesser amount of OP tokens than their airdrop claims are larger in numbers but shorter on their balances, in contrast to those few addresses who has had a delegated balance of much larger compared to their airdrops. Last but not least, the daily price comparison of OP with ETH has shown a heavy correlation between the two tokens, which is logical due to Optimism being built on top of Ethereum.

Price Correlation

The comparison of OP prices changes since its airdrop with the price fluctuations of ETH has indicated that it is heavily correlated to the price of ETH, and to some degrees, to the whole crypto market movements. It can be seen that over the first few months, the percentage price changes of OP was more drastic compared to ETH, which is logical since OP considered a riskier asset. However, as the token progress over time and become more mature, its fluctuations have decreased and become closer to the changes of ETH.

Re-delegation

Among those addresses who re-delegated their OP tokens to other wallets, the majority of which has had a self delegated balance less than their claimed OP tokens. In other words, they delegated their holdings to other addresses probably with more voting powers. On the other hand, there have been addresses, although with less than 2% share of the total, who have had a delegation balance of more than their claimed airdrops. This means that these addresses are among those powerful ones.