Optimism, the third largest Ethereum (ETH) network overlay in terms of total locked value (TVL), has officially launched its airdrop. Those who have transacted on the network before March 2021 and those who are regularly active are affected. However, the airdrop was not without its problems.
Optimism launches its OP
token airdrop
Optimism (OP), one of the main overlay (layer 2) of the Ethereum network (ETH), launched its long-awaited airdrop of OP tokens last night, and almost 250,000 wallets are eligible.
Let the claims (officially) begin! ‿ pic.twitter.com/9NgqyyQgiy
– Optimism (✨_✨) (@optimismPBC) May 31, 2022
Currently the third largest overlay on the Ethereum blockchain in terms of total locked value (TVL), Optimism had begun to hint at a future token release when it announced its decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) last April.
Many people had sniffed out the possibility of an airdrop and had made transactions on Optimism’s network to that effect. Indeed, most of the time, emerging projects often reward their first users via a distribution of tokens, and this can notably concern the volume of transactions carried out.
In the case of Optimism, those eligible for this OP token airdrop are those who used the network before June 23, 2021 or those who donated via Gitcoin to encourage the development of the overlay. Regular users of the Optimism network will be given additional tokens to supplement those previously obtained.
Optimism has announced that future airdrops are expected. For your information, only 14% of the total tokens planned for airdrops were distributed today.
Overlay network severely disrupted
Even before the official announcement was made via Optimism’s social networks, the overlay network was quickly overloaded, especially as some exchanges had announced earlier in the day that OP token trading would be possible on their platform.
This is usual for major launches, which in the case of Optimism caused delays in transactions on the mainnet and through remote procedure calls (RPCs).
We’re working to heavily provision more capacity before our official announcement-in the meantime the public RPC may respond slowly. We’ll give an update here and on https://t.co/ag75CudOAA once resolved.
– Optimism (✨_✨) (@optimismPBC) May 31, 2022
In the case of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, RPCs are a set of communication systems that allow services like MetaMask to interact with networks like Optimism.
As a result, some people who benefited from the distribution of OP tokens found themselves unable to buy or sell their tokens. Also, in some cases, some users reported that they were eligible for airdrop, but were no longer eligible on the day the token was released.
And sometimes, on the contrary, some people were able to retrieve their tokens even before airdrop was officially deployed by interacting with the smart contract. However, little information has been provided on this subject by the Optimism teams.
Aware of these issues and the success of its first airdrop, Optimism said it was working to ensure that the second and future airdrops would run smoothly.
