Optimism’s core development team reversed the result of a key vote, with $49.7 million worth of OP tokens to be transferred from user airdrops to the strategic ecosystem fund.

The core development team funded by Optimism cast a decisive vote of 8.486 million OP tokens, which shifted the voting outcome and secured passage for a proposal to transfer approximately $49.7 million worth of OP tokens from the user airdrop allocation to a fund managed by the Optimism Foundation. The proposal aimed to reallocate the use of 546.9 million OP tokens, representing 12.7% of the total OP supply. These tokens, originally earmarked for the user airdrop allocation, were reassigned to the Optimism Foundation-managed "Strategic Ecosystem Fund" to support the adoption and growth of the OP Mainnet and enterprise business initiatives. Final voting results showed 17.974 million OP votes in favor and 10.931 million OP votes against. 16 minutes and 52 seconds before the voting deadline, a representative named Test in Prod cast a whale-sized 8.486 million OP vote in favor, lifting the proposal’s passage rate sharply from 45.77% to 61.84%. Excluding this vote, the final approval rate would have been just 46.47%. In other words, while the proposal met the quorum requirement, it would have failed to pass without this decisive vote, and the relevant funds would have remained in the user airdrop allocation.