Data from Token Unlocks shows that $250 million worth of Optimism’s native token OP will be unlocked on May 31. The tokens will be distributed to Optimism’s core contributors, investors, ecosystem fund and users via an airdrop.
After May 31, there will be a vested distribution of 2.4 million OP tokens that will be linearly unlocked each day.
This is also the first time seed investors in Optimism Labs and the core developers will have received their allocated amount of OP tokens. Some of these investors, including venture capital firms a16z, Paradigm and IDEO CoLab, have made a significant return on their initial investment.
According to data from CryptoRank, Optimism’s seed investors are up 10,700% on their initial investment. Optimism Labs has raised a total of $175 million over two rounds of funding, and $3.5 million in their seed round.
Many traders also speculated that the core contributors and investors might be eager to sell their share of tokens, triggering a dip in the price of OP tokens right before the highly anticipated Bedrock upgrade.
yes, I wonder if the team/investors can keep their hands tied without selling
— tantra (@tantraxyz) May 27, 2023
At the time of writing, OP was trading at $1.62, remaining relatively flat over the last 24 hours. The lack of any significant price action in either direction suggests that the large unlocking event may already be priced in.
