In official announcements, Optimism revealed its plan to distribute initial OP tokens through a grant to Base on August 30th. This transaction had been pre-informed as part of their ongoing plans.
In a previous update, Base and Optimism developers jointly introduced a revenue-sharing and governance-sharing protocol. The smart contracts of Base can only be upgraded through a 2/2 multisig wallet, with one signature controlled by Base and the other by the Optimism Foundation.
Base will also allocate 2.5% of its revenue or 15% of its profits to the Optimism Collective, depending on which is higher. In return, Base stands to receive up to a maximum of 118 million OP tokens over the next six years, granting it a voice in the protocol governance of Optimism.