The Optimism Foundation has announced its budget forecast for the fifth year of its operations, covering the period from May 2026 to April 2027. According to the foundation's estimates, approximately 343 million OP tokens will be introduced into circulation during this period.
According to the overall forecast, the 200 million OP tokens expected to enter circulation will be sourced from the Ecosystem Fund. Furthermore, 47.6 million OP are expected to be unlocked for early-stage seed contributors, and 15.3 million OP for investors.
As a result of these events, it is estimated that the circulating supply of OP tokens will reach approximately 2.5 billion by April 2027. This represents about 58.3% of the total OP token supply of 4.29 billion.
The Optimism Foundation added that the tokens being issued are in line with the project's original allocation plan. The foundation clarified that there has been no request for a new token distribution and that the operations are conducted strictly within the framework of the existing allocation system.
Optimism's Operating Expenses Have Decreased.
Reportedly, the Optimism Collective received new commitments totaling around 150 million OP for its fourth year of operations, covering the period from May 2025 to April 2026. This figure represents a decrease of roughly one-third compared to the 229.92 million OP recorded in the third year.
Optimism officials stated that the reduction in expenses was driven by the termination of the retroactive funding program, the absence of user reward distributions during this period, budget cuts for the Grants Council, and a reduction in the number of grants awarded by the fund.
In the fourth year, the volume of new OP tokens entering circulation via the Governance Fund decreased by 53% compared to the previous year, from 28.7 million OP to 13.4 million OP. The volume of tokens distributed through the Retro Funding program also dropped by 30%, from 20.3 million OP to 14.2 million OP. There were no token distributions through airdrop programs in the fourth year, compared to the 10.4 million OP distributed the year before.
*This is not investment advice.





