Kraken Received a 25 Million OP Grant to Build Ink on Optimism

Crypto exchange Kraken received a substantial number of OP tokens as a grant to build its upcoming L2 blockchain using the OP stack.

Background

• Kraken will be launching its own L2 blockchain, Ink, early next year
• Following the same path as Coinbase’s L2 Base, Kraken also tapped on Optimism’s OP stack to build its chain atop the Ethereum network
• The OP stack is a customizable toolkit that lets developers create their own L2 rollups using Optimism’s technology
• Over a dozen apps — including DEXes and aggregators — will be available on Ink when it makes its debut
• Around 40 people from Kraken are working on Ink at the moment

Details

• A recent report suggests that Kraken's decision to build on Optimism's OP Stack framework comes with a “big” grant from the Optimism Foundation
• They received 25 million OP tokens, worth around $34.5 million at the current market price
• The deal was sealed “early this year"
• At the time, the stash was roughly worth $100 million

Why should you pay attention?

• Ryan Wyatt, the Chief Growth Officer at Optimism noted that 5 million OP tokens will be used by the team to “fund the engineering efforts for Ink”
• Meanwhile, the remaining 20 million tokens will be used “to drive fees to the Collective and make it positive ROI”  

Who said what?

• Exchange representatives revealed,

“Under the deal, the token allocation would be paid to Kraken in grants over a time period”

• Andrew Koller, the founder of Ink, brought to light that the number is “similar” to other deals that are part of the Superchain ecosystem
• He added,

“It was actually Optimism that proposed that number first, and it was very in line with what other Superchain participants have gotten”

• Koller said that the Optimism Foundation grant is based on transactions per month
• Specifically,

“Each time you achieve one, then there's different tranches that get unlocked, and there's an initial unlock, and then the rest gets unlocked at each month”

• He added, for newer L2s in the Superchain,

“It's just like a time-lock thing. And after them [Base], I think all Superchain participants are really driving that around activity”

Zooming out

• Other projects have also bagged OP token stashes
• Base, for instance, unveiled last year that it will receive up to 2.75% of the OP token supply over a six-year period
• At the moment, the total supply of OP tokens is hovering around 4.3 billion
• This makes Base eligible to receive up to 118 million OP tokens