Recently Optimism, an optimistic rollup on Ethereum, announced its airdrop #1. If you haven’t been included, don’t worry, there will be more airdrops by Optimism. As you can see from the graphic below, 19% of the total token supply is allocated for airdrops. The first airdrop, however, distributes only 5% to early adopters, leaving 14% for later airdrops on the table. In this article I unpack the criteria for airdrop #1 to follow up with an article of how to prepare for airdrop #2 and #3.

Eligibility Criteria Airdrop #1: For the airdrop #1 there were 6 eligibility criteria that each awarded a user with OP allocations. However, if you ticked 4,5 or all 6 of these criteria you were awarded with additional bonuses that increased the amount of tokens radically. The bonus for striking all 6 criteria is 25.769,8 OP token adding up to a total of 30.353,91 OP (see graphic below):

Each of the above criteria has more detailed explanations of what users had to do in order to check it:

1. Repeated Optimism user: Came back to use apps on OP in four different weeks between June 23, 2021 and March 25, 2022. A real one.
2. Multisig Signer: Control over large pools of capital and key protocol functions. With great power comes great responsibility!
3. Optimism User: Used an OP bridge prior to June 23, 2021, or used Optimism projects more than once between June 23, 2021 and March 25, 2022. Welcome fam!
4. Donated to Gitcoin Grans on L1: A true believer! You funded public goods on L1. Grants contributions are a good sign of positive-sum thinking.
5. Priced out of Ethereum: Used bridges while being a regularly active user on L1. An explorer’s mindset with an interest in lower fees.
6. DAO voter: Active participant in governance on L1. A sign of participation and stewardship. Thanks for being involved.

Optimism Governance Fund - the OP Stimpack: In addition to the user airdrop, Optimism also issued a governance fund - the OP Stimpack. This is a rewards program for projects building on Optimism. Depending on certain criteria, projects get rewarded. It will be interesting to see how projects make use of these airdropped OP rewards. Perhaps some forward (part of) their token rewards to their users. Some end users might profit twice: 1st directly from the airdrop and 2nd indirectly from the projects that they’ve used and that are included in the OP Stimpack.

The general Stimpack criteria can be taken from the following graphic: 

OP Stimpack for projects that fullfill the above criteria:

Why is this important? Based on the knowledge of the Airdrop #1 criteria and the governance fund, we’ll carve out some strategies, to do good for the network and potentially qualify for future Airdrops #2 and #3. Let’s explore that in the upcoming article.

THIS IS NO FINANCIAL ADVICE. EVERYTHING I MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE IS RISKY. YOU CAN LOSE WHAT YOU PUT IN. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND INVEST AT YOUR OWN RISK.