Optimism-backed core development team Test in Prod cast a decisive 8.486 million OP vote 16 minutes and 52 seconds before the voting deadline, helping a controversial proposal pass. According to Foresight News, the proposal will move about $49.7 million in OP tokens from user airdrop allocations to a strategic ecosystem fund managed by the Optimism Foundation.

The vote snapshot was taken on August 13 at block 155,526,433, one week before the voting ended. The proposal covered 546.9 million OP tokens, or 12.7% of total supply. Final results showed 17.974 million votes in favor and 10.931 million against. Without the team’s vote, support would have been 46.47%, below the quorum needed for approval, and the funds would have remained in user allocations.

The Optimism Foundation said large-scale user airdrops no longer fit its institutional adoption strategy. It said the funds will instead support partnerships, incentives, and enterprise collaborations, with cumulative deployment to be disclosed in annual budget reports. Test in Prod said enterprise bidding requires confidentiality and that Optimism needs the fund to maintain an advantage in market competition. Ethereum scaling research platform L2BEAT and pseudonymous researcher Polynya opposed the move, questioning the openness of the authorization, the unclear link to token-holder value, and the lack of review of early partnership spending.