Optimism to unlock $81 million in tokens next week

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Optimism, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution, will unlock around $81 billion worth of OP tokens on January 29, 2024, according to data from Token Unlocks.

Crypto projects often lock up a portion of the token supply and release it over time to prevent early investors and insiders from offloading large quantities of tokens immediately after they are distributed, which could potentially destabilize the market. Yet, such events are often viewed with apprehension, as they can lead to price declines due to the sudden increase in available supply.

Optimism’s upcoming unlock will distribute over 24 million OP tokens, equivalent to around 2.5% of the circulating supply, to the project’s investors and core contributors. The project has unlocked around 885 million tokens so far, equivalent to 20.6% of its total supply.

Earlier this month, Optimism released its Canyon upgrade, the next major upgrade following the Bedrock upgrade. Developed in partnership with Base, Canyon focuses on supporting the Shanghai and Capella hardforks, along with implementing several minor bug fixes. The project further announced a $30 million token distribution to reward contributors “building the public goods that power the Optimism Collective.”

OP is trading at around $3, down over 2% in the past week, according to CoinGecko’s data. The token’s market cap is around $2.9 billion.

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