1inch announces 300,000 OP token airdrop for users on Optimism

Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch has announced it will give out a retrospective airdrop of 300,000 OP tokens to 1inch wallet users on the Optimism network — an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution. 

The tokens will be distributed equally between all wallets that have made swaps via the 1inch wallet on the Optimism network up until September 1. This will exclude wallets used in a Sybil attack — a security threat whereby an attacker uses multiple addresses for malicious reasons. The airdrop was scheduled to take place today but instead will now take place within a few days time.

1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz said, in a statement, "Optimism is one of the most efficient and popular L2 solutions. Since 1inch expanded to Optimism, we have seen substantial activity on that network, and this reward will come as an extra incentive for them to use 1inch on Optimism." 

1inch expanded to Optimism in August 2021, intending to reduce transaction fees and boost throughput for its users. It has the potential to reach 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) over time compared to approximately 15 TPS on Ethereum, 1inch co-founder Anton Bukov told The Block last year. 

According to 1inch, over 45,000 wallets have used 1inch on Optimism. Of these, 28,600 had it set as their priority — meaning most of their transactions were on the Optimism network. 

Optimism's Layer 2 Optimistic Rollup scaling solution aims to utilize the security of Ethereum while reducing costs and latency by bundling transaction verifications off-chain. Currently locking over $900 million in value on the network, it has also seen a steadily rising transaction count since the start of the year.