Wintermute, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, has transferred its Optimism (OP) tokens to a Binance exchange wallet in anticipation of the upcoming token unlock. The unlock is scheduled to release $587 million worth of tokens into the market on May 31, with 386 million OP tokens being unlocked for early contributors and investors. This accounts for 9% of the total supply, and is expected to increase the circulating supply by over 100%.
To prepare for the token unlock, Wintermute’s wallet has transferred 2.651 million OP, worth $4.31 million, to Binance over the past two days. According to on-chain analytics platform Spot on Chain, the DeFi platform and crypto market maker has already sold the tokens for $1.63 per OP.
Wintermute purchased a total of 21.31 million OP tokens from crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase at an average price of $1.01. The company has already sold 5.9 million tokens for $10.6 million and currently holds 15.37 million OP, which is worth approximately $23.4 million at the time of writing.
Wintermute was one of the investors who participated in the $150 million Series B funding round for Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Optimism in 2022. This funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm, and helped save Ethereum users $1 billion in fees, according to Crunchbase.
Optimism is scheduled to undergo a major upgrade on June 6, known as the “Bedrock” upgrade. This upgrade is expected to reduce transaction fees and improve compatibility with the Ethereum network.