# Background
The Optimism Foundation’s Airdrop #1 rewards those who have been instrumental as early adopters and active users of projects in the Optimism ecosystem. To celebrate our Ethereum roots, The Optimism Foundation also wants to welcome active L1 participants who can help scale Ethereum’s innovations, culture, and values to Layer 2. In total, 248,699 addresses are eligible to claim OP in this initial airdrop.
Our airdrop has six sets of criteria. Two for OP Mainnet users that target early adopters and active project users, and four for L1 Ethereum, which target active contribution, positive-sum behaviors, and active participation. Each set is distinct, meaning that an address can be eligible for multiple and allocated a sum of tokens accordingly. A snapshot of addresses was taken on 03-25-2022 0:00 UTC. The allocations and criteria break down as follows:
# Airdrop #1 Allocations
Name # of Addresses Eligible OP Allocated per Address OP Mainnet Users 92,157 776.86 Repeat OP Mainnet Users* 19,174 1,692.49 DAO Voters 84,015 271.83 Multisig Signers 19,542 1,190.26 Gitcoin Donors (on L1) 23,925 555.92 Users Priced Out of Ethereum 74,272 409.42
* Note that Repeat OP Mainnet Users Receive 776.86 + 1,692.49 = 2,469.35 OP
Overlap Bonuses # of Addresses Eligible OP Allocated per Address 4 Categories & OP Mainnet User 2,707 4,180.54 5 Categories & OP Mainnet User 627 13,330.16 6 Categories & OP Mainnet User 45 27,534.98
The amount of OP tokens that an address receives is cumulative, meaning that the sum of OP tokens allocated for each matching criteria set is the amount that an address is eligible to claim (overlap bonuses are not cumulative).
# OP Mainnet Early Adopters
The Foundation sought to identify OP Mainnet users who had actively used applications on OP Mainnet as a part of their crypto experience.
# OP Mainnet Users
This group selects for addresses that have used OP Mainnet, including both early adopters and newer users, but narrows down to a group that has used OP Mainnet multiple times.
Criterion: Address bridged to OP Mainnet from L1 during the early phases of mainnet (prior to Jun 23, 2021), or used OP Mainnet 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).
- These rules are only based on usage on OP Mainnet. It does not matter which bridge, exchange, fiat on-ramp, etc you used in order to come to OP Mainnet.
# Repeat OP Mainnet Users
This tier selects for the most active OP Mainnet users, who repeatedly come back to use applications in the Optimism ecosystem.
Criterion: Address is an ‘OP Mainnet User’ and made at least 1 transaction with an OP Mainnet application across four or more distinct weeks. This selects for the top 20% of ‘OP Mainnet Users’.
- “Distinct weeks” are counted based on the time of an addresses’ first transaction (i.e. days 1 – 7 are considered Week 1, not the calendar week). This makes sure that there is no skew by which day of the week an address joined OP Mainnet.
# Active Ethereum Participants
These rules aim to target behaviors that match Ethereum and Optimism’s values of active contribution, positive-sum behavior, and scaling decentralized applications to the world.
# DAO Voters
The Foundation believes that active and engaged governance is crucial to scaling decentralized systems. Addresses who match this criterion have actively chosen to actively contribute by participating in governance.
Criterion: Address has either voted on or authored at least one proposal onchain, or at least two on Snapshot (offchain).
- We filtered to “active DAOs” who have had at least 5 proposals with at least 5 votes.
- Onchain governance contracts included: Governor Alpha and Bravo, Aave, Curve, Maker, Aragon, DAOHaus, DAOStack, and forks.
- Since Snapshot votes were offchain, the Foundation recognized that these were more susceptible to spam/farming behavior, often driven by voters with nominal voting power. To mitigate this, we filtered Snapshot votes to voters who made up the top 99.9% of total voting power in each DAO (i.e. >= 0.1% of voting power was made up by the sum of all smaller voters).
# Multi-Sig Signers
Multi-sig signers are entrusted with larger pools of capital or control over key protocol functions. They are often the present (and future) DAO leaders and builders.
Criterion: Address is a current signer on a Multi-Sig which has executed at least 10 transactions all-time (this cohort includes 95% of all multisig transactions).
- 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 (on L1)
Gitcoin donors have chosen to behave in positive-sum ways by funding public goods. These addresses may also align with Optimism’s goal to build sustainable funding source for public goods through retroactive funding (RetroPGF (opens new window)).
Criterion: Address has made an onchain donation through Gitcoin on L1. This includes any donation, regardless of if it was during a matching round.
- For the time period between rounds 1 – 5, we included addresses who interacted with Gitcoin contracts, sent legacy ExecuteSubscription calls, or appeared in Gitcoin’s donor API (opens new window).
- For the period between rounds 6 – 13 (present), we included donor addresses in the Gitcoin ‘BulkCheckout’ contract transaction logs.
# Users Priced Out of Ethereum
Active users of dapps on Ethereum are critical to ecosystem growth. Many of these addresses have started bridging to other chains due to high fees, and we want to help retain them in the Ethereum ecosystem while rewarding their curiosity and exploration. Optimism’s airdrop is also calibrated to reward loyalty to Ethereum, so users who have abandoned Ethereum entirely would not receive an airdrop.
Criterion: Address bridged to another chain, but still made an app transaction on Ethereum in each month after they bridged, and transacted at an average rate of at least 2 per week since then (top 60% of matching addresses).
- Bridges included top L1s by TVL: Terra, BSC, Fantom, Avalanche, Solana, Polygon; and general-purpose L2s: Arbtirum, OP Mainnet, Metis, Boba.
- To ensure that we gave a long enough period to sample activity, addresses had to have bridged away from Ethereum at least 90 days before the snapshot.
# Overlap Bonus
Early OP Mainnet users who also match multiple Ethereum criteria may be most likely to become important participants in the OP Mainnet ecosystem, so these addresses were rewarded with an extra overlap bonus.
Criterion: Address matches an ‘OP Mainnet Early Adopter’ criterion, and matches at least 4 criteria sets in total (including OP Mainnet criteria).
- The overlap bonus increases as more criteria are matched (i.e. the bonus for 5 criteria is greater than the bonus for 4 criteria)
# Global Filtering Criteria
We believe that it’s best for the community for our airdrop list narrows as well as possible to real users and honest actors. So we applied some basic filters to various criteria:
- Address Activity: Addresses needed to have used Ethereum for more than 1 day (24 hours between their first and last transaction) in order to qualify for ‘Active Ethereum Participants’ criteria. This applied to all Ethereum criteria except for multisig signers, since it’s common for signers to have “signing-only” addresses.
- Sybil Farmers: We identified a few patterns of likely sybil attackers, who often created tens, hundreds, or more duplicate addresses. We required stronger activity criteria for these addresses, which helped filter out these attackers, but also preserved many real users. It’s impossible to catch everything, but removing as many sybillors as we can help get more OP in the hands of true positive-sum participants.
- Snapshot Bots and Spam: We used ENS’ bot-catching proposal (opens new window) to filter out addresses that spam Snapshot votes. Snapshot spaces that appeared to be either compromised or falsified were also excluded.
- Exchanges and On-Ramps: We filtered our known centralized exchange and fiat on-ramp addresses.
- Exploiters: Known exploit addresses were filtered out.
- Recency Filter: Addresses needed to have made a transaction after Jan 1, 2019. For multisig signers, only the multisig needed to have executed a transaction after Jan 1, 2019. We chose this cutoff date to narrow in on active addresses, while also providing a window before L1 gas prices (opens new window) consistently rose and potentially priced some users out of Ethereum.
# Additional Sybil Filtering
Optimism is for the people, not the sybils. After the announcement of Airdrop #1, we received limited reports of sybil activity that was not excluded by our initial filtering. We have since applied additional filtering to Airdrop #1 that excludes 17k addresses and recovers 14m OP. Recovered OP will be redistributed proportionally to remaining addresses already included in Airdrop #1. The Airdrop #1 Allocations table above has been updated accordingly to reflect this. For a list of excluded sybil addresses, see this spreadsheet (opens new window).
In the interest of maintaining the integrity of future OP Airdrops, we will not be publishing the additional filters used to remove these addresses.
# What’s Next?
To check your eligibility for Airdrop #1 and claim your tokens visit the airdrop app (opens new window).
We made our best effort to make Airdrop #1 as fair as possible. However, there’s always a chance some great community members may have slipped through the cracks. Don’t worry! This is Airdrop #1, and 14% of the total initial token supply is reserved for future airdrops. The best way to earn OP is to get involved in the Optimism Collective:
- If you want to build on Optimism, visit our developer documentation or jump in to Discord (opens new window).
- If your talents are non-technical, jump in to Discord (opens new window) to find other builders, apply to be a Support NERD, or just make some memes 🍉
- Bridge your assets to OP Mainnet here (opens new window) and explore projects on OP
As always: stay safe and stay Optimistic.
# References
- Application Transaction: Any transaction, excluding token transfer and approval transactions.
- Airdrop #1 Dashboard: https://dune.com/optimismfnd/optimism-airdrop-1 (opens new window)
- Detailed Protocol Metrics: https://dune.com/optimismfnd/Optimism (opens new window)
- OP Token Address: 0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000042 (opens new window)
- Optimism on Twitter: https://twitter.com/optimismFND (opens new window)
- Join the Optimism Discord: https://discord-gateway.optimism.io/ (opens new window)
- CSV with the list of airdropped addresses: op_airdrop1_addresses_detailed_list.csv (opens new window)
