The “Flippening” Comparison

It finally happened. The great Flip everyone’s been waiting for — Optimism and Arbitrum have officially surpassed Ethereum in combined transaction volume. (What, you were expecting some other flippening?) \n

Use this historic event to compare and contrast these two major L2 chains. Include metrics such as total and average transaction volume, average transaction size, active users, new users added, and anything else you find relevant to this comparison.

Introduction

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that allows for the creation and execution of smart contracts, using its native cryptocurrency Ether. Ethereum was first proposed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013, and it has since grown to become the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Arbitrum is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that uses a technique called rollups to combine multiple transactions into one, reducing on-chain transaction costs and increasing scalability. It was developed by Off-chain Labs.

Optimism is also a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that aims to increase Ethereum's transactions per second and decrease transaction fees by running computation off-chain and keeping all transaction data on-chain, which can support all of Ethereum's Dapps.

Method

The main idea of this dashboard is to provide an overview of the activity and growth of Ethereum Layer 2 blockchains since their launch. The main metrics being evaluated on the dashboard are:

1. Main Layer 2 activity: This metric provides an overall view of the activity on the L2 blockchain, such as the number of transactions, swaps, and NFTs.
2. Transactions: This metric measures the number of transactions that take place on the L2 blockchain.
3. Swaps: This metric measures the number of token swaps that take place on the L2 blockchain.
4. NFTs: This metric measures the number of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are traded on the L2 blockchain.
5. New user/activity Layer 2 activity: This metric measures the number of new users and their activity on the L2 blockchain.
6. Development: This metric measures the number of development activities taking place on the L2 blockchain.

The dashboard allows users to adjust the parameters such as timespan and past months to suit their needs, with the initial settings being by week and 12 months, respectively. These parameters can be changed after logging in to the Flipside (FS) platform.

Analysis

✍🏻 Conclusion

As of Findings above:

• Although Optimism went live before Arbitrum, the volume of daily Arbitrum transactions quickly outpaced that of Optimism.

• In terms of daily volume, Arbitrum outperforms Optimism.

• Arbitrum has had a greater increase in its active user base than Optimism has since its release. If we look at the breakdown of the percentages, however, it appears that the trend is reversing and optimism is once again rising above 50%.

• The monthly average number of transactions per user in each chain has been hovering around 10 for the past few months.

• The ratio of fees on Optimism has been rising steadily from 40% to over 70% as of October 22.

• Each chain's average daily fees have been falling since its inception. Since September, however, the typical transaction charge on Optimism has been more than double that of its competitors.

• The number of daily Arbitrum swaps quickly eclipsed the number of Optimism transactions, despite Optimism's launch occurring before Arbitrum's.

• Since a few months ago, the average number of transactions per user on each chain has been consistently around 5.

• When looking at the NFT activity over the previous year, it is clear that both chains have shown very consistent patterns, albeit with certain waves in which one chain outperformed the other and vice versa.

• The number of new contracts deployed on the Optimism network has been increasing, with developers deploying more than 1.5 times as many new contracts as on Ethereum and 5 times as many as on Arbitrum. This indicates a high level of activity and growth on the Optimism network.

Hey there 👋!

Firstly, I appreciate you sticking with it until the conclusion.

I'm Hamed, a civil engineering Ph.D.

student interested in data analysis.

I've made many similar dashboards and visualizations since I started at Flipside in January.

Please take a look at my various contact details and let me know what you think.

About:

• Author: HaM☰d

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• Discord: 0xHaM☰d#8391

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• Twitter: @arjmandi_hamed

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• Email: h_arjmandi2012@yahoo.com

Comparing Optimism against Arbitrum in terms of transactions and active users, it can be seen how even Optimism launch took place before Arbitrum launch, the amount of weekly Arbitrum transactions rapidly surpassed the amount of Optimism transactions.

The average daily transactions per users on Arbitrum is higher then Optimism since August late and both of them are more than Ethereum mainnet.

Overall, as of graph right the momentum of growth of transactions count on Arbitrum is sharper than other two networks.

🚮 Fee

Looking at the fees paid on each chain, we can see how in this case, since the inception of Arbitrum, the fees in both cases looks similar in a daily basis. However, since November 22, Optimism fees are increasing more than the Arbitrum ones. In fact, looking at the cumulative chart, it can be seen how the cumulative fees on Optimism has been increasing.

The daily average fees has decreased in both chains since the beginning. But, since September 10th, the average transaction fee has been higher on Optimism being more than double.

🖼️ NFT Interaction

💱 Swap Metrics

💸Defi Overview

Distribution of user count by total their transactions

As of following charts can be seen the most of all networks have had less than 10 trnsactions over time

The user interactions by Defi protocols in terms of transactions and user counts on Optimism and Arbitrum have experienced some fluctuations, so that in some eras Optimism and in others Arbitrum have a higher count than each other, but the only thing that is clearly observed is that both of them are higher than Ethereum, and that is because of lower fees and recent campaigns that Layer3 and Galexe have had on these two networks.

Furthermore, as shown in the chart to the right, both of these networks have surpassed Ethereum in terms of cumulative transaction count since November. 

:gear: Development

The development of networks is an important metric that indicates the level of activity and growth of a network. The bar graph below suggests that the number of new contracts deployed on the Optimism network has been increasing, with developers deploying more than 1.5 times as many new contracts as on Ethereum and 5 times as many as on Arbitrum. This indicates a high level of activity and growth on the Optimism network.

Here, we filter out wallets with > 10k transaction counts to exclude bots/contracts.

Most of the users were actually just sojourners.

The charts above show the cumulative new wallets by the number of days where they have been active. From the charts above, we see a sharp drop in new users between those who have been online for one & two day to those who are online for 5 or more days.

When we look at users who are online for > 14 days, this drops to ~15 & 20k in Optimism and Arbitrum, respectively. This suggests that the majority of the users were more like sojourners, leaving after a day or two of visit.

The NFT activity on Optimism based on transactions and buyer count are higher than Arbitrum, but in terms of average bought NFTs, the Arbitrums NFT lovers surpassed the Optimism since last November.

When comparing the volume of daily swaps between Optimism and Arbitrum, it is clear that even though Optimism was released first, Arbitrum quickly overtook it.

If you look at the charts right, you can see that by the end of October 22nd, optimism had decreased to in terms of swap transaction and swapper counts.

Since a few months ago, the average number of transactions per user across both chains has been roughly 5.

🏃‍♀️ Active Users

• Defined as users who have been active for 7 days (performed a transaction on 7 separate days) or more and were active in the last 7 days (performed transaction in last 7 days)

The following visuals show the weekly transactions count and average users online for each network.

As can be seen in all of three the weekly transactions count increased, but in Optimism it was sharper than others,

Also, the weekly average users online on Optimism is higher than Arbitrum.

👛 New Wallets Created on NEAR

Here we count the total number of new wallets with the fact transactions table. A new wallet is defined as one that has a transaction initiated from fact_transactions.