Significant crypto news: the Optimism and Sui crypto networks are set to unlock new tokens worth a combined $650 million.
Below are all the details.
Summary
Optimism and Sui: ready for increased circulating stocks of tokens
As anticipated above, the Optimism and Sui cryptographic networks are ready for a significant unlock of tokens that will take place within this week.
Through this move, the networks will see each of their circulating supply of tokens increase significantly.
Specifically, Optimism will see its circulating supply double after the token unlock, while Sui will have a smaller increase, but the tokens will go to retail investors.
According to Token Unlocks, Optimism of the Ethereum Layer 2 network is seeing one of its largest unlocks, with 387 million tokens being released on 31 May, worth $590 million.
The aforementioned tokens will be split between core contributors and investors and will represent 9% of the total token supply and a 114% increase in the current circulating supply.
The news of the token release comes a week before Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade, aimed at reducing fees and improving network performance.
However, the price of Optimism’s native token, OP, has unfortunately dropped in the past 24 hours: from $1.64 to $1.52, down 6%.
Sui blockchain will unlock 61 million tokens for retail users
Speaking exclusively of the Level 1 Sui blockchain, we see that this, compared to Optimism, will unlock a much smaller amount of tokens on 3 June, precisely 61 million tokens worth $62 million.
This move will increase its circulating supply by 13%.
In addition, Sui confirms that there will be more regular unlocks like this until November, when the circulating supply will double, similar to the Optimism unlock that will take place this week.
In any case, there is one key difference in the Sui unlock, which is that the tokens in question will go to retail users as airdrops.
Difference made known by Alex, an analyst at cryptocurrency trading firm Scimitar Capital, who stated the following on Twitter:
“In contrast, SUI unlocking is slightly different. The airdrop SUI farmers are the people getting their tokens this week, rather than the team and investors. It should seem easier pvp than retail who cannot coordinate than investors and team.”
Not only that, some tokens will also go to the Sui Foundation. After that, the Scimitar Capital analyst continues on Twitter:
Finally, we note that significant token releases have already occurred in May. Specifically, on 28 May Avalanche unlocked 9.5 million tokens worth $139 million, which represents 1.3% of its token supply.
However, there was no significant impact on the token price.
Optimism’s Bedrock update coming on 6 June
As anticipated above, Optimism is almost ready for the major update named Bedrock that will arrive on 6 June.
Specifically, the update is aimed at greatly reducing transaction fees, implementing better network security, and having better compatibility with Ethereum.
Via a Twitter thread on 15 May, the team behind Optimism said that on 6 June, the network will be down for two to four hours to allow for the update, as noted:
We see that Bedrock constitutes the first major network upgrade voted on by the Optimism Governance Board’s Token House.
In fact, the Optimism community’s Bedrock report states the following:
“Bedrock improves on the previous system by reducing transaction fees by using optimized batch compression and Ethereum as a data availability layer; reducing delays in including L1 transactions in rollups and managing L1 rearrangements more accurately.”
Finally, thanks again to the new update, the network will also experience faster deposit times. We know that Optimism’s time to confirm a deposit in its current state is about ten minutes, which will become three as soon as the upgrade is successful.
