Optimism, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, has unveiled its intention to conduct a private sale of 116 million OP tokens to seven selected purchasers. The sale, aimed at treasury management, is valued at $159 million at current prices.

Private Sale Impact and Token Lockup

Despite concerns about potential price depression due to a token sale, the private nature of this transaction suggests it is unlikely to significantly impact OP token prices. Notably, these tokens are sourced from the unallocated segment of the OP token treasury and are not part of the circulating supply. Buyers must adhere to a two-year lockup period, preventing immediate resale on secondary markets.

Governance Delegation Allowed

Optimism (OP) token price over the past 30 days. Source: CoinGecko

While resale is restricted, buyers have the option to delegate these tokens to unrelated third parties for governance purposes. Optimism emphasizes that this sale aligns with its original plan, which had allocated 30% of the initial token supply for such purposes.

Recent Airdrop and Industry Position

This sale follows Optimism’s announcement of its third airdrop, where 19.4 million OP tokens were distributed to over 31,000 addresses involved in delegation activities within the network’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Optimism Collective. Among layer-2 scaling solutions, Optimism, alongside Polygon and Arbitrum, continues to play a pivotal role, with Optimism surpassing Arbitrum in total transactions in August, largely fueled by activity from Coinbase’s sandbox and the identity verification project Worldcoin.