- Optimism Foundation conducts a private sale of 19.5 million tokens, valued at over $89 million.
- The Ethereum community expresses concerns over transparency and the impact of such sales.
the Optimism Foundation, known for its support of the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, Optimism, has conducted a private sale of approximately 19.5 million of its governance tokens. At current market prices, this sale amounts to a staggering valuation of over $89 million.
This development marks a pivotal moment for the foundation, yet it leaves the broader Ethereum community with mixed feelings.
Veiled Transaction Terms and Community Response
The terms of this private transaction, including the identity of the buyer, remain shrouded in mystery. This lack of transparency has sparked discussions and concerns among community members and industry observers alike.
The foundation has stated that these tokens, locked for two years, originate from the unallocated portion of the OP token treasury. This strategic reserve forms part of the foundation’s original budget, which accounts for 30% of the initial OP token supply.
This announcement follows a recent tweet from Optimism’s official account, alerting the community to upcoming transactions from the foundation-controlled wallets, totaling around 25 million OP tokens.
Starting today and over the coming days, there will be several transactions from Optimism controlled wallets totaling approximately 25M OP tokens. We’re sharing as a heads up to our community that these are planned transactions.
— Optimism (@Optimism) March 7, 2024
The tweet, dated March 7th, clarified that these were planned transactions, hinting at the foundation’s strategic moves to bolster the project’s standing and future development.
However, this is not the first instance of the foundation engaging in private sales. A precedent was set in September 2023 when 116 million OP tokens were sold, fetching over $160 million. Such significant financial moves by the foundation underscore its ongoing efforts to secure funding and support for Optimism’s development and expansion.
Looking back at the strides made by Optimism in the Ethereum ecosystem, Vitalik Buterin praised the significant $100M infusion aimed at bolstering development and innovation. This milestone investment was met with enthusiasm, marking a pivotal moment for the community. As previously reported by ETHNews.
Transparency Concerns
Despite the strategic intentions behind these sales, the latest transaction has not been universally welcomed. Within the Ethereum community, voices of dissent and concern have emerged.
Prominent among the critics is Anthony Sassano, founder of The Daily Gwei, who expressed his discomfort with the opaque nature of such transactions on social media platform X.
I love Optimism and what they're building (and I'm an angel investor in them) but private sales with zero transparency like this just leave a really bad taste in my mouth.
This is not the gwei https://t.co/Ic70Fih5ND
— sassal.eth/acc 🦇🔊 (@sassal0x) March 8, 2024
At the time of writing, the price of Optimism native token, OP, has slightly rose 0.43% in the last 24 hours, reaching a price of $4.61. This represents an increase of 21.52% over the past 7 days.