Optimism delivers $41 million in crypto in the fourth round of airdrop

Optimism, the second largest rollup on Ethereum, announced a few days ago that it has officially started the fourth round of airdrops to its crypto community.

A total of 10.3 million OP have been distributed, with a value of approximately 41 million dollars.

This time, the artists who have created NFTs on the Ethereum mainnet or on Optimism’s Superchain in the last year were the ones awarded.

All the details below.

Optimism distributes the fourth round of crypto airdrop to the NFT creators category

Optimism, a well-known rollup layer-2 of Ethereum, announced this week that it has officially launched the fourth phase of the airdrop program established by the foundation, through which several members of their crypto community have been rewarded.

A total of 10.3 million OP tokens were airdropped to approximately 22,000 eligible addresses, for a total distributed value of 40.8 million dollars.

The fourth round of Optimism focuses on artists from the world of web3, in particular on all the NFT creators who have minted a token on the Ethereum mainnet, on Optimism’s Superchain (OP mainnet, Base, Zora) from January 10, 2023 to January 10, 2024.

In the official page of the claim, we can read the exact words published by the cryptographic project team:

“A great company needs artists. This airdrop is a thank you to artists and their ability to bring creativity into the chain. Your contributions play a vital role in the Optimism Collective.”

The more gas spent to mint NFTs, the higher the reward for the end user, where the maximum cap is set at 6000 OP per wallet.

The prizes have sometimes been increased by up to 50% for users with a “bonus attribute”. This attribute has been assigned to all those who have created an NFT contract before January 2023, transferred an NFT created after November 11, 2023, spent more than 0.0005 ETH in gas to purchase a collection from July 14, 2023, or who have been active on the Superchain since at least November 11, 2023.

Below is an image that details the eligibility criteria and allocation for each category.

You can check if you can claim the Optimism airdrop on this website.

Users have until February 13, 2025 to request the tokens.

All previous Optimism (OP) airdrops

The fourth round of airdrop offered by Optimism also represents the smallest in terms of value in crypto distributed to the community.

Altogether, considering also the other 3 previous rounds, Optimism has given a total of 255.9 million OP to its stakeholders, for a total value of about 923 million at the time of writing the article.

In the latest, “only” 10.3 OP were allocated as a reward to the various categories of NFT artists, while in the third round on September 13, 2023, the final compensation to active users in the governance of the project amounted to 19.4 million OP.

Even in the second round, dated February 8, 2023, the total amount was higher compared to the last event, with a total airdrop of 11.7 million OP tokens destined for those who had delegated their OP tokens (at least 20 tokens for 100 days) and for those who had spent more than $6.10 in gas on the OP mainnet.

The first Optimism airdrop instead took place on May 31, 2022 and saw the largest portion of the allocated tokens delivered to the community, equivalent to 200 million OP.

Users of the OP Mainnet network, signers of multisignature transactions, Gitcoin donors, and early adopters of Ethereum are the eligible subjects for this first round that has started the different phases of rewards.

This one ranks alone as the 11th airdrop largest in crypto history in terms of money given away, with a value of 720 million dollars according to current OP prices.

So far, Optimism has actually airdropped only a small part of what was decided at the dawn of the birth of this practice, with about 13% of the total initial supply that still needs to be allocated. 

There will still be several opportunities to pocket a good handful of crypto, simply by performing small tasks or being active users of the cryptographic ecosystem.

As reminded by the same project on X, in the safe there are still about 560 million OP to be distributed in the future airdrop phases, which will be announced to the public in the future.

According to the team of layer-2, dividing the allocation of tokens among various users of the community into multiple events allows for a more fair and appropriate compensation based on the support provided to the ecosystem.

In the published post it is stated that:

“multiple airdrops allow to refine this mechanism, favoring a positive sum behavior”

The upcoming layer-2 airdrops

The Optimism airdrop is just the first of a long list of layer-2 crypto projects that will be released in 2024.

A few days ago, Starknet also decided to make its debut in the market by launching the STRK token through an airdrop to its community, reaching a record market capitalization at the time of listing despite several criticisms reported by users regarding the eligibility criteria.

Even Manta Pacific, a second-layer scalability solution, has decided to launch its own digital currency MANTA with a reward for its supporters, taking advantage of the uncontrollable hype in the crypto market recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In the coming months, we expect that other layer-2 tokens will be launched through this kind of incentivization mode, with several projects already under the spotlight of farmers.

Specifically, the most plausible names at the moment are zkSync Era, Scroll and Linea.
Overall, these 3 rollups control about 940 million dollars of the total TVL marked on the L2Beat ranking.

Given the notoriety of the professionals in these 3 cases, and considering the presence of high external investments from VC, it is likely that the next airdrops will bring great satisfaction.

It is also worth considering that the trend of layer-2 is one of the hottest in this early 2024 as the shared need to scale Ethereum in the fastest and most effective way possible is growing.

Being eligible can sometimes be very simple: First of all, it will be necessary to bridge funds on the respective chains, carry out various transactions such as swap and liquidity mining, interact with as many protocols as possible, and be active for at least 3 months.