Optimism Braces for $587M OP Token Unlock Amid Dwindling Price

Ethereum scaling protocol Optimism is gearing up for a planned token unlock scheduled for May 31st.

As such, over 386 million OP tokens, worth more than $587 million at the current price, will be released, which represents 9% of the total supply.

• The upcoming event also marks the first unlock for core contributors and investors, which is scheduled exactly a year after the native token was launched.

Optimism will unlock 9% of total $OP supply tomorrow

This is the 1st unlock for core contributors & investors

At current token price, potential selling pressure ~$600M pic.twitter.com/g7sg1vXMkM

— Token Terminal (@tokenterminal) May 29, 2023

• Optimism’s second major airdrop went live on February 9th this year, wherein it distributed more than 11 million OP tokens to 307,000 unique addresses. The price of the OP dropped shortly after the fact.
• The influx of tokens into the open market this time around could lead to heightened selling pressure and trigger a potential downward price movement as well.
• It is also important to note that early OP investors are currently sitting on considerable gains. Hence, if this cohort of holders starts offloading their tokens for quick gains, such a move could further contribute to the selling pressure.
• OP has been trading under tremendous pressure already and was down by over 30% in the past month. Leading up to the event, OP slipped to $1.52 after falling by more than 6% over the last 24 hours dragging the asset to a four-month low.
• The scaling protocol’s TVL also witnessed a drawdown of 21% since establishing an all-time high of $2.18 billion in mid-April to the current $1.72 billion.
• Despite these setbacks, Optimism’s surpassed its rival Arbitrum in terms in terms of revenue generation this month.
• Meanwhile, Optimism is set to undergo its highly anticipated Bedrock upgrade on June 6 at a time when competition in the layer 2 space has been heating up. This move is expected to bring in reduced transaction fees, and offer greater network security, and improved compatibility with Ethereum.