The highly anticipated airdrop of Ethereum scaling solution Optimism is expected to officially go live on Tuesday, but some users have already been able to claim the tokens.
On the project's Discord channel, a moderator from the Optimism team said that some users were able to claim the OP tokens on Tuesday by interacting directly with the smart contract while the team was still in the process of testing the airdrop functionality.
According to a blog post Optimism wrote last month, the expected airdrop was expected to be the first in "an entire season of airdrops." The Optimism team did not disclose dates for the airdrops.
However, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that Optimism's first airdrop would take place Tuesday, but it's unclear if the unforeseen early claims would delay such plans.
At press time, Optimism's official Twitter account had not yet announced the launch of the airdrop.
"The claim is not ready yet," said Discord user Billy161, a member of the Optimism team. "We're in the process of deploying the infrastructure to handle the insane load that a token launch brings. Our announcement was anticipated by centralized exchanges that went rogue, which has created an uproar."
Crypto exchange OKX announced it would officially begin trading Optimism's OP/USDT and OP/USDC pairs at 6:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, according to a Tuesday blog post.
Airdrop breakdown
On Twitter, Optimism users expressed frustration that certain parties were able to claim tokens before others and feared the early trading would affect the token's price.
Other users expressed disappointment that the site changed their status to "ineligible" even though they had previously indicated they would be eligible for the airdrop.
According to Optimism's airdrop whitepaper, the first airdrop is intended to reward users who "played an important role as early adopters and active users of projects in the Optimism ecosystem."
A total of 248,699 addresses are eligible to claim Optimism's OP tokens in this first airdrop, according to the whitepaper.