Media: a16z venture fund bought $90 million worth of Optimism governance tokens

As part of the deal, OP coins will be blocked for sale for two years

01.05.2024 - 11:30

168

2 min

What’s new? Venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has purchased governance tokens of the Optimism (OP) blockchain worth $90 million in a private transaction, Unchained Crypto reports, citing anonymous sources. Under the terms of the deal, the assets are placed on the blockchain for two years, during which period they cannot be sold on the market.

Material by Unchained Crypto

What else is known? Optimism Foundation, a non-profit organization, announced a deal for a similar amount in early March, without disclosing the investor. At that time, it was also reported that the coins would be locked for two years, while the buyer would be able to delegate them to unaffiliated third parties to participate in voting on the development of the project.

Analyst Colin Wu later reported that a March closed deal to sell $89 million worth of OP tokens to six private investors was the largest funding round of the month.

The a16z deal comes amid increased activity in the Optimism ecosystem, as well as the growing popularity of OP Stack, an open-source tool that allows developers to create Layer 2 (L2) blockchains.

OP Stack has been used by US crypto exchange Coinbase to create Base. The Aevo network and other projects are also built on it. Recently, blockchain developers Celo also chose this tool to create their own L2 network.

The OP token ranks 42nd in the cryptocurrency ranking by market capitalization with a figure of $ 2,7 billion and is trading at $2,53, having added 6,7% per day. At the same time, the drop has been 31% since the beginning of the year.

After the Dencun hard fork in the Ethereum blockchain, fees in networks based on it showed a significant drop. The leader was Optimism, where the cost of transactions decreased by 99%, amounting to less than $0,001.

Author: