Optimism Airdrop Confirmed – Here’s how to Claim OP Tokens for free

The announcements of airdrops often excite the crypto community. Not only does the crypto project gather increased hype, but the participants also have their share of benefits. This entails receiving “free money” in the form of the native cryptocurrency of the project. The Optimism crypto project is a well-known “Layer 2” scaling solution for Ethereum. It recently announced an upcoming airdrop for the OP token. Here’s everything you need to know about Optimism and its upcoming airdrop.

What is Ethereum Blockchain?

Ethereum is a blockchain network founded in 2015. The network is notable for being the first blockchain to offer smart contract functionality. As a result, Ethereum can be the basis of decentralized applications. Ethereum’s network token is called Ether, although some people still mistake the token name with the blockchain name.

Ethereum is the most popular smart contract platform due to its status as the first network to offer smart contracts. However, Ethereum is struggling with problems related to gas fees and, in general, the speed and cost of transactions. That’s what gave birth to layer 2 solutions.

What are Layer 2 solutions?

Because of Ethereum’s rising fees and transaction time, layer 2 projects were born. Layer 2 solutions run on top of Ethereum’s blockchain, but execute transactions off the main chain. They also ensure security throughout the process is still maintained. This takes off the load of heavy computing and speeds up transactions significantly.

What is Optimism Crypto?

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that operates on Ethereum. The main feature of Optimism is to make transactions on Ethereum applications very cheap. Optimism moves transactions away from the blockchain to another blockchain. With this, gas fees drastically go down, and throughput increases. Optimism provides Ethereum developers with the opportunity to use all available tools on Ethereum without the need for changes. According to the Optimism developing team, traders will pay a 10x reduced cost as gas fees. To tackle fraud and invalid state transition, Optimism makes use of Optimistic rollups.

How Optimism bridges to Ethereum

Optimism allows fast Layer 1 to Layer 2 transfers from Ethereum mainnet to Optimism. However, all transfers from Optimism to Ethereum take up to 7 days. This is because it uses the waiting period to verify transactions against fraud. To bridge between Optimism and Ethereum, users can use the Optimism Gateway. To bridge between both chains, a user needs to enter the gateway and connect his wallet. The next step requires you to choose your type of wallet and make your deposit.

Once the contract acknowledges the tokens that you sent in, your tokens will bridge over. The bridging process is swift, and it takes about 5 minutes from start to finish. After the tokens “bridge” on Optimism, users can make transactions just like they do on Ethereum. Also, Optimism has the same security and resistance that the Ethereum mainnet has. Optimism supports wallets such as Coinbase, Metamask, Rainbow, and Token, among others.

Does Optimism have an Airdrop?

Optimism recently announced the launch of their token called OP. It serves as a governance token, which means that OP holders will be able to determine protocol incentives and vote on protocol upgrades.

What is the Optimistic Collective?

As a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), the Optimistic Collective is the latest announcement of Optimism. It basically changes the concept of traditional DAOs where users only “vote” on decisions, but also adds a co-owning twist. The purpose of this collective is to produce strong public goods infrastructure for OP, which increases the utility of the L2, and creates a useful economy to build on.

The Optimistic Collective splits into two groups:

• The Citizens’ house: This part will govern public goods funding, creating a protocol for developments. Citizenship will be granted as non-transferrable NFTs, and will grow over time with the community.
• The Token house: This constitutes all holders of the OP token. It governs protocol upgrades, project incentives, and other sides of the business.

OP Tokenomics – How are Optimisim tokens distributed?

The total supply of OP will be 4,294,967,296 tokens and are distributed in the following way:

• 19%: airdropped to eligible members
• 20%: for retroactive public goods funding
• 25%: reserve for the ecosystem funds (governance, partner, seed, and unallocated funds)
• 17%: to investors
• 19%: to core contributors

How to Claim Optimism Tokens?

In order to whitelist for the first airdrop and know if you’re eligible, follow the below steps (courtesy of airdrops.io ):

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Visit the Optimism airdrop eligibility checker page.
2. Scroll down to the airdrop section.
3. Connect your ETH wallet or enter your ETH address.
4. If you’re eligible, then the eligible amount will be displayed.
5. The snapshot of the addresses was taken on March 25th, 2022 at 0:00 UTC.
6. Users who match multiple eligibility criteria from above will also be eligible for an extra overlap bonus.
7. The claim is not yet live so make sure to follow their social channels to stay updated.
8. There will also be future airdrops for active users of the platform.

Who is Eligible for the Optimism Airdrop?

Optimism Users: Users who’ve bridged to Optimism from L1 during the early phases of mainnet (before Jun 23, 2021), or used Optimism for more than 1 day (at least 24 hours between their first and last transaction) and made a transaction using an app (after to Jun 23, 2021).

Repeat Optimism Users: Users who’re already eligible for the airdrop as “Optimism Users” and made at least 1 transaction with an Optimism application across four distinct weeks.

DAO Voters: Address has either voted on or authored at least one proposal on-chain, or at least two on Snapshot (off-chain).

Multi-Sig Signers: Address is a current signer on a Multi-Sig which has executed at least 10 transactions all-time. Multisig Wallets Include Gnosis Safe v0.1.0-1.3.0, MultiSigWithDailyLimit, MultiSigWalletWithTimeLock, and addresses in Etherscan’s ‘Multisig’ label which had a function to get owner addresses.

Gitcoin Donors: Address has made an on-chain donation through Gitcoin. This includes any donation, regardless of if it was during a matching round.

Users Priced Out of Ethereum: Address bridged to another chain, but still made an app transaction on Ethereum each month after they bridged, and transacted at an average rate of at least 2 per week since then. Bridges included top L1s by TVL: Terra, BSC, Fantom, Avalanche, Solana, Polygon; and general-purpose L2s: Arbtirum, Optimism, Metis, Boba.

(courtesy of airdrops.io ):