Crypto18 August, 20263 min read
Optimism Governance Approves 546.9 Million OP Tokens for Strategic Ecosystem Fund
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546.9 million OP tokens moved from user airdrops to Foundation's Strategic Ecosystem Fund. Worth about $49 million in OP tokens reallocated.
OP tokens redirected
Optimism governance approved a proposal to redesignate 546.9 million OP tokens set aside for user airdrops as a Strategic Ecosystem Fund, with the amount equal to 12.7% of Optimism’s total token supply. Bloomingbit reported that the final support for the proposal was 61.84%, and that a vote from Test in Prod, Optimism’s core development team, flipped the outcome about 16 minutes before voting closed. Bloomingbit also said the measure had met quorum but would have failed because it did not secure majority backing without that team’s vote, while the Optimism Foundation said broad user airdrops do not align with its current institutional adoption strategy.
The KuCoin report said voting commenced on August 14 at Beijing Time and will conclude on August 20 at 12:07, with support votes totaling approximately 9.105 million OP and opposition votes amounting to approximately 4.258 million OP. KuCoin added that the initial total supply of OP is approximately 4.295 billion tokens, with 19% (approximately 816 million tokens) explicitly reserved for user airdrops.
Community split deepens
The KuCoin report described the governance vote as a shift that could impact token holders’ expectations for future airdrops, noting that the voting outcome had not yet been finalized and community deliberation was ongoing. KuCoin said support votes totaled approximately 9.105 million OP while opposition votes were approximately 4.258 million OP, and that the quorum requirement was approximately 16.54 million OP, leaving the outcome uncertain. Odaily星球日报 framed the vote as a civil war over whether a 5.4 hundred million-token airdrop would be forfeited, and it said voting closes on August 20 at 12:07.
Odaily星球日报 also reported that long-term governance whale olimpio.eth cast its first opposing vote of 2.16 million OP, and that the fourth-year airdrop was reduced to zero with the official focus shifting toward retention and revenue-directed initiatives. Cointelegraph added that Optimism said it has no additional airdrops planned after distributing 269.1 million OP across five rounds, contending that airdrops were better suited to an earlier phase focused on broad user acquisition than its current institutional push.
What’s at stake next
KuCoin reported that Optimism has not proceeded with planned OP buybacks since May, after completing the second and third monthly community buybacks in March and April and then halting subsequent buyback plans. KuCoin said in March the Foundation spent 367.905 ETH to repurchase 6,951,453 OP, and in April it spent 50.16 ETH to repurchase 925,654 OP, bringing total repurchases to 9,451,924 OP valued at approximately $756,200 based on the latest price of $0.08. Bloomingbit said the Optimism Foundation plans to regularly disclose how the ecosystem fund is used through annual budget reports, and it added that the foundation expects to use the remaining tokens for institution-focused initiatives to help expand the Optimism mainnet and enterprise services.
KuCoin described the proposal’s required changes as creating a new allocation category called "Strategic Ecosystem Fund" and reallocating the remaining 546.9 million OP from the user airdrop category to this fund. Cointelegraph said Optimism is an Ethereum (ETH) scaling project behind OP Mainnet and the OP Stack, and it reported that more than 30 OP Stack chains currently contribute revenue to Optimism.