Optimism price slides 9% after $450M worth of OP tokens transferred from multisig

Optimism’s (OP) token shed over 9% of its value in the last 24 hours after the team made an unannounced transfer of $450 million worth of the tokens from its multi-signature wallet.

We’re seeing some confusion about recent transfers of OP out of a multisig. This is expected—today we executed a series of planned standard transfers to the Coinbase Custody wallets of various investors in OP Labs PBC.

— Optimism (✨🔴_🔴✨) (@optimismFND) August 17, 2022

The token transfer initially birthed rumors that the Ethereum-based layer-2 network had been hacked.

But the team clarified that the transfers were “planned standard transfers to the Coinbase Custody wallets of various investors in OP Labs PBC.”

OP price fell to as low as $1.29 before rebounding to its current value of $1.35 as of press time.

Community bashes Optimism

The crypto community has lashed out at the Optimism team for not announcing the token transfer.

According to rotkiapp founder Lefteris Karapetsas, the communication void resulted in the community trying to “figure out if something was wrong.”

You are transferring $450m of tokens in a public blockchain without any notice.

Guys please make an announcement well in advance.

We were all scrambling to figure out if something was wrong.

— Lefteris Karapetsas | Hiring for @rotkiapp (@LefterisJP) August 17, 2022

Why didn’t you announce it first before doing the transfers?? So weird and making your community freak out for no reason.

— Crypto Coach 🐒📈💰 (@WisdomMatic) August 17, 2022

Another community member said Optimism’s team was not “announcing the important things,” adding that he hasn’t “seen a team so disorganized and uncommunicative with its community.”

More disappointments. For a long time, I haven’t seen a team so disorganized and uncommunicative with its community.
I don’t understand what’s wrong with you, but you’re breaking the community because you’re not announcing the important things. Please, be better.

— ᴱᵗʰᵃⁿ (@ethanchain) August 18, 2022

Some have implied that the Optimism team shorted the token.

Now they could short the shit out of their token because they knew it was gonna instant dump 👍

— Didi (@0x_didi) August 17, 2022

They shorted and then longed after tweet. Ez $

— jjaayyzz (@NBA_GSW_30) August 17, 2022

Optimism’s TVL rises

The total value of assets locked in Optimism is currently over $1 billion, surging by over 280% in the last 30 days, according to DeFiLlama data.

MakerDAO (MKR) revealed that the amount of DAI on the network rose from $30 million to $140 million within five days.

Dai on Optimism 👀

From 30 million to 140 million in 5 days. pic.twitter.com/AQlNWvX6c9

— Maker (@MakerDAO) August 9, 2022

The layer2 network is home to 35 projects like DeFi protocol Aave (AAVE), derivatives exchange Synthetix (SNX), decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI), and automated market maker Velodrome  — these four protocols account for 87% of Optimism’s TVL.

Aave has the highest volume with $538.4 million worth of assets locked on Optimism, followed by Synthetix with $204 million.

Meanwhile, DeFi protocols like Iron Bank, Yearn Finance (YFI), and Homora also joined Optimism on August 16.

The new protocols reportedly joined the layer-2 network to improve their security and capital efficiency.