Optimism Tokens Claimed By Users Ahead of Official Airdrop Announcement

Ethereum scaling solution Optimism’s hotly anticipated airdrop is expected to officially go live on Tuesday, but some users have already been able to claim the tokens.

In the project’s Discord channel, a moderator from the Optimism team said that some users were able to claim the OP tokens on Tuesday by directly interacting with the smart contract while the team was still in the process of testing the airdrop functionality.

According to a blog post authored by Optimism last month, the anticipated airdrop was expected to be the first in “an entire season of airdrops.” The Optimism team did not disclose the dates of the airdrops.

However, several sources with knowledge of the matter told CoinDesk that Optimism’s first airdrop would take place on Tuesday, but it is unclear whether the unanticipated early claims would delay such plans.

As of press time, Optimism’s official Twitter account had not yet announced the launch of the airdrop.

“The claim is not ready,” said Discord user Billy161, a member of the Optimism team. “We are provisioning infrastructure to handle the insane load that a token launch brings. Our announcement got frontran by centralized exchanges going rogue, which has created a frenzy.”

Crypto exchange OKX announced it would officially start trading Optimism’s OP/USDT and OP/USDC pairs at 6:15 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a blog post earlier Tuesday.

READ MORE: Ethereum Rollup Optimism Launches DAO, Announces Long-Awaited Airdrop

Airdrop snafu

On Twitter, Optimism users expressed frustration that certain parties had been able to claim tokens before others and worried that early trading would affect the price of the token.

Other users expressed frustration that the site changed their status to “ineligible” despite previously indicating that they would be eligible for the airdrop.

According to Optimism’s airdrop whitepaper, the first airdrop is intended to reward users who have been “instrumental as early adopters and active users of projects in the Optimism ecosystem.”

In total, 248,699 addresses are eligible to claim Optimism’s OP tokens in this initial airdrop, according to the whitepaper.