Optimism Foundation announced that its fifth annual (May 2026 to April 2027) budget outlook shows that approximately 343 million OP tokens will enter circulation over the next 12 months. The report was released on Thursday (August 6), coinciding with OP hitting an all-time low five days earlier.
Key Points of the Fifth Annual Outlook
Optimism is an Ethereum Layer2 network, and OP is its governance token. The Foundation specifies new OP sources each year. The token sources for the fifth year include four parts: the Ecosystem Fund provides 200 million tokens (the largest portion), early core contributors provide 47.6 million, investors provide 15.3 million, and the Governance Fund provides 10 million. Both airdrops and Retro Funding are set to zero.
The above items total 272.9 million tokens. However, the report's own supply target implies 343 million, leaving an unexplained gap of approximately 70 million tokens between the two.
There is another gap in the report: the report states a circulating supply of 2.16 billion tokens, while the Foundation's official tracker (designated as the authoritative record in the same report) showed 2.29 billion on Thursday, with 125 million OP unaccounted for.
The Foundation calls its data directional estimates. Even at the lower reading, it still means more than 200 million new tokens. Investors already hold 92% of their allocation, and early contributors hold 78%. These large-scale scheduled unlocks are now drawing from a shrinking pool.
Buybacks Cover Only a Small Fraction of New Supply
The governance body approved a buyback program in January 2026, using up to half of Superchain revenue to purchase OP monthly for one year. The first buyback was completed on March 5, spending 95.8 ETH to purchase 1.57 million OP. The total buyback so far has exceeded 9 million OP, worth approximately $781,000. Against the projected unlock of 343 million, this equates to buying back 1 token for every 38 unlocked.
The revenue behind the buybacks is also shrinking. Coinbase's Base network exited the OP Stack in February, and OP fell 23% that day. A few weeks later, Optimism laid off more than 20% of its staff. On Thursday, OP traded near its all-time low of $0.0867, down 2.5% that day. On August 1, it hit a low of $0.082043. The current price is down 98% from its March 2024 high of $4.84.
Enterprise Business Becomes the Token's Bet
Optimism has stopped distributing tokens to users. No airdrops occurred in the fourth year, Retro Funding was paused after Season 7, and the grants committee budget was reduced. These two programs remain largely unused. Retro Funding has used 81.4 million tokens out of a pool of 859 million.
In January 2026, OP Enterprise replaced them, selling production-grade infrastructure to exchanges, fintech companies, and banks. Bitpanda's Vision Chain, Ink, and Dunamu's GIWA Chain protocol lead the client list. Base signed on as a paying customer in the same post announcing its exit.
The Foundation ties all future spending to this transition. The Optimism Foundation stated in the report: "Token deployment is tied to the OP Enterprise strategy, measured by OP Mainnet growth and enterprise customer acquisition."
OP Mainnet achieved monthly transaction volume growth of over 60% in the fourth year. At current prices, the expected unlocked tokens are worth approximately $29.8 million, representing 15% of the token's total market cap. For holders, the question is simple: can enterprise revenue grow faster than the supply to be unlocked?
