Optimism falters under high traffic following OP token launch

Optimism experienced a debilitating high load after its governance token OP launched, causing delays on the Optimism blockchain mainnet and remote procedure calls (RPCs). 

The network delays are particularly notable given the attention Optimism’s token drop has received, following in the wake of other high-profile airdrops that encountered turbulence as well in their efforts to dole out tokens to community members and other stakeholders. Compounding the issue are indications that some participants were able to claim tokens ahead of the official announcement.

Optimism responded to the transaction delays following the OP token launch on Twitter: 

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“Sup sleuths—as you might have guessed, OP Drop #1 launches today. We have NOT officially announced yet, but we’re already experiencing an all-time high demand … We’re working to heavily provision more capacity before our official announcement—in the meantime the public RPC may respond slowly.”

An RPC is a set of communication protocols that allows another entity, such as MetaMask, to interact with other protocols, such as the Optimism layer 2 blockchains. With Optimism’s RPCs going down, users could not buy or sell OP since they couldn’t access the Optimism blockchain via apps that default on its RPC.

This also means that many apps defaulting on top of Optimism’s RPC such as Uniswap or MetaMask cannot communicate a request to execute Optimism transactions either.

As The Block previously reported, 231,000 addresses could claim a portion of the 214 million OP tokens dropping today. Only 14% of the supply reserved for airdrops was released today.