Optimism Docs

OP Allocations

# Allocations at a glance

Category Percentage Description
Ecosystem Fund 25% The Ecosystem Fund is a proactive program meant to stimulate development in the Collective ecosystem by providing funding to projects and communities
Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) 20% RetroPGF is the Optimism Collective’s primary mechanism to adequately and reliably reward public goods for the impact they provide
User airdrops 19% A series of airdrops to reward users for specific helpful behaviors, beginning with Airdrop #1
Core contributors 19% The people who’ve been working tirelessly to bring the Optimism Collective into existence
Sugar xaddies 17% Investors

# User Airdrops

Allocation: 19%

The Optimism Foundation will distribute a portion of the OP allocation to members of the Optimism and Ethereum communities in multiple waves.

# Airdrop #1

The first user airdrop distributed 5% of the OP token supply to 248,699 unique addresses. This airdrop was targeted towards people who:

  • Behave in positive-sum ways.
  • Contribute actively to their communities.
  • Have been priced out of Ethereum.

The addresses and amounts were chosen to reward Optimism users, as well as attract core Ethereum users to the OP family. Airdrop #1 cast a wide net to distribute OP to more than 250k addresses.

See the Airdrop #1 documentation for a detailed breakdown of eligibility criteria.

# Airdrop #2

Optimism’s Airdrop #2 distributes 11,742,277.10 OP to 307,965 unique addresses to reward positive-sum governance participation and power users of OP Mainnet. A snapshot of addresses was taken on 01-20-2023 0:00 UTC.

See the Airdrop #2 documentation for a detailed breakdown of eligibility criteria.

# Airdrop #3

Airdrop 3 took place on Monday, September 18. The airdrop allocated 19,411,313 OP to 31,870 unique addresses. Similar to Airdrop 2, this drop rewards positive sum governance participation. Users who have delegated tokens between 2023-01-20 at 0:00 UTC and 2023-07-20 0:00 UTC received tokens in this airdrop. A bonus is given to addresses who delegated to a delegate who voted in Optimism Governance.

See the Airdrop #3 documentation for a detailed breakdown of eligibility criteria.

# Airdrop #4

Airdrop 4 took place on Feb 20, 2024, and distributed 10,343,757.81 OP to 22,998 unique addresses. This Airdrop was a ‘thank you’ to the artists, creators, and pioneers who have played a role in creating culture across the Superchain and across the crypto ecosystem as a whole. This was also Optimism’s first Airdrop across the Superchain, celebrating the growing network of OP Chains who are choosing to build together.

See the Airdrop #4 documentation for a detailed breakdown of eligibility criteria.

# Future airdrops (#5, 6, …)

An allocation of 14% of the OP token supply will be held in reserve for future user airdrops. As a result of the game-able nature of airdrops, the Optimism Foundation will be responsible for determining airdrop metrics as fairly as possible. The intent behind airdrops is to distribute them to addresses which positively impact the Optimism community. Participation on governance forums will not be used as a criteria for future airdrops. The best way to improve your odds of receiving future airdrops is to get meaningfully involved!

# Ecosystem Fund

Allocation: 25%

The Ecosystem Fund is an incentive program designed to stimulate development of the Collective ecosystem. The Ecosystem Fund will be used to directly fund the communities and companies that drive the expansion of the Collective ecosystem (OPCOs).

The allocation dedicated to the Ecosystem Fund is to be further split into the following categories:

  1. Governance Fund (5.4%)
  2. Partner Fund (5.4%)
  3. Seed Fund (5.4%)
  4. Unallocated (8.8%)

The Ecosystem Fund is intended to be a kick-starting mechanism that will be phased out entirely once the OP in the fund has been depleted. The Optimism Foundation expects the function served by the Ecosystem Fund (proactive funding) to eventually be replaced by private third-party investors who can expect to be paid out by the Retroactive Public Goods Funding (opens new window) mechanism.

The wide variety of funding mechanisms ensures that airdrops constantly flow to users who make valuable contributions to the ecosystem. These contributions result in ecosystem growth, ecosystem growth results in demand for block space, demand for block space results in revenues, and these revenues are then productively re-deployed into the ecosystem as additional airdrops.

Each fund can be thought of as a parallel experiment in OP allocation, enabling rapid iteration and doubling down on what works to further grow the ecosystem.

# Governance Fund

An allocation of 5.4% of the OP token supply will be dedicated to the first Governance Fund. All projects demonstrating usage on Optimism can request tokens from this fund via the Optimism Grants Council (opens new window)

# Partner Fund

An allocation of 5.4% of the OP token supply will be dedicated to the Partner Fund. These funds will be distributed strategically by the Optimism Foundation to grow the Optimism ecosystem for the benefit of the entire Collective.

# Seed Fund

An allocation of 5.4% of the OP token supply will be dedicated to the Seed Fund, which is focused on supporting projects & teams from 0 → 1, particularly projects that are entirely focused on building Optimism.

# Unspent allocation for future growth programs

An allocation of 8.8% of the OP token supply will be held in reserve for future programs and/or operational services to the Collective, to be determined by the Foundation and/or the governance community as appropriate.

# Retroactive Public Goods Funding

Allocation: 20%

Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) (opens new window) will initially be distributed by the Citizens' House. RetroPGF rounds are expected to occur on a quarterly basis with the objective of ensuring that all OPCOs are rewarded adequately, appropriately, and reliably based on their impact to the Collective—key to our vision (opens new window).

RetroPGF will be funded by several revenue sources:

  1. 20% of the initial OP token supply held as the “RetroPGF Reserve”.
  2. Optimism network transaction fees and sequencer revenue.

The Optimism Foundation may choose to increase the total OP payout of any given period by tapping into the 20% RetroPGF Reserve.

# Core Contributors

Allocation: 19%

The Core Contributors allocation will be distributed to the people who helped bring Optimism and the Optimism Collective from concept to reality, and will continue to pay for development of the protocol. All tokens distributed as part of the Core Contributors allocation will be subject to a lockup period.

# Sugar Xaddies

Allocation: 17%

Investors. They funded us and our crazy vision for the future. Couldn’t-a done it without ya. All tokens distributed as part of the Sugar Xaddies allocation will be subject to a lockup period.

# Token Distribution Details

At genesis there will be an initial total supply of 4,294,967,296 OP tokens. 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.

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

Taken together, the Foundation estimates the total supply of circulating OP tokens to increase as detailed in this sheet (opens new window).

Circulating supply is defined as the amount of OP tokens in general circulation that have no known restrictions on transfer.

Available supply is the amount of OP tokens that are (a) part of the circulating supply, or (b) are subject to some governing body to determine the pace at which they are distributed. This includes all Ecosystem Funding indicated in the pie chart above.

Airdrop 4