Optimism Foundation sells $90M in tokens amid market rally and token unlock anticipation

The Optimism Foundation said it entered into a private token sale of approximately 19.5M OP tokens, worth roughly $90 million, to an unnamed buyer, according to a Mar. 8 statement.

According to the Foundation:

“The tokens come from the Unallocated portion of the OP Token treasury, and are part of the Foundation’s original working budget of 30% of the initial OP token supply. “

The sold tokens will be subject to a two-year lockup period, during which buyers can delegate them to third parties for governance participation.

In a Mar. 7 post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the Foundation added that it is giving its community the “heads up” about several “planned transactions” that would emanate from its wallet.

“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,” it stated.

Meanwhile, this move mirrors a similar action undertaken by the Foundation in September 2023 when it announced private sales of 116 million tokens, valued at around $157 million, to seven entities.

Optimism is the second-largest Ethereum-based layer2 network, controlling around 24% of the market, according to L2beat data. The network’s total value locked is approximately $9 billion as of press time, behind Arbitrum’s $16 billion.

OP price performance

Despite news of the recent sell-off, OP’s price has demonstrated tremendous resilience in recent months amid a broader market rally that has boosted Bitcoin and Ethereum’s prices to new highs.

During the past week, the layer-2 network’s token reached a new all-time high of $4.86 on Mar. 6, up more than 115% over the past year, with increases of over 20.9% in the last seven days and 36.38% in the past month. However, its price has slightly retraced to $4.60 as of press time.

Meanwhile, OP faces significant sell pressure ahead as the network is set to unlock 24.16 million tokens, worth approximately $110.65 million, by Mar. 29.

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