The Optimism Foundation has allocated 25 million OP tokens to Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States, as part of a strategic partnership.
The deal, which was valued at around $100 million earlier this year and is currently valued at around $42.5 million due to token price fluctuations, sees Kraken build its own layer-2 blockchain called Ink using Optimism’s OP Stack framework.
Kraken’s newly announced project Ink will join a growing “Superchain” ecosystem that includes layer-2 networks from other major companies like Coinbase, Sony, and Uniswap. The Superchain leverages the OP Stack framework, allowing participants to create their own scalable rollups based on Optimism’s blockchain technology.
While both parties confirmed the details, Kraken announced that the token allocation will be distributed over a set period of time. According to Ink founder Andrew Koller, the number of tokens provided to Kraken is in line with grants given to other projects in the Superchain ecosystem. “Optimism was actually the first to propose this number, and it was very much in line with what other Superchain participants were achieving,” Koller said.
According to CoinGecko data, the partnership was reportedly completed in January or February, when the OP token was valued at between $3.99 and $4.06. The current price of the token is around $1.70, which is a significant drop from the initial valuation.
Ryan Wyatt, chief growth officer of the Optimism Foundation, detailed the allocation breakdown in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). According to Wyatt, the deal includes 5 million OP tokens to fund engineering efforts for Ink and 20 million OP tokens tied to transaction milestones intended to generate fees for the broader Optimism ecosystem, referred to as “The Collective.”
Wyatt said the foundation remains committed to investing in developers, adding, “The collective will not stop investing in developers.”
*This is not investment advice.
