Blockchain Optimism’s governance has approved a proposal to repurpose 546.9 million OP tokens previously reserved for user airdrops to support ecosystem growth and institutional adoption.
OP currently has a market cap of roughly $214 million, with a circulating supply of about 2.29 billion tokens, according to CoinGecko data.
The new Strategic Ecosystem Fund will support partnerships with chains, protocols and institutions, as well as incentives to increase activity and liquidity on OP Mainnet and grow OP Enterprise.
The decision drew pushback from some delegates who argued the tokens had been promised to users and questioned how the foundation would measure returns from the fund. Supporters said the allocation would be better used to compete for enterprise deals and drive growth.
Optimism vote to repurpose 546.9M OP. Source: Optimism
Optimism said it has no additional airdrops planned after distributing 269.1 million OP across five rounds, contending that airdrops were better suited to an earlier phase focused on broad user acquisition than its current institutional push.
Optimism is an Ethereum (ETH) scaling project behind OP Mainnet and the OP Stack, the blockchain framework used by networks including Base, Unichain, Kraken’s Ink and Sony’s Soneium. More than 30 OP Stack chains currently contribute revenue to Optimism, according to the project.
OP rebounds 11% but remains 93% below record high
OP traded around $0.09 on Thursday, up roughly 11% over the past 24 hours amid a broader crypto market rally. Despite the rebound, the token remains more than 93% below its all-time high.
At OP’s current price, the 546.9 million-token allocation is worth around $50 million, equivalent to nearly a quarter of the token’s roughly $211 million market capitalization.
Source: CoinGecko
In July, Cointelegraph reported that the blockchain had signed a a memorandum of understanding with Viva Republica, the operator of South Korea-based mobile money transfer app Toss, to on a three-month proof-of-concept to test a Korean won-based stablecoin infrastructure for institutional payments.
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