There are 2 problems that has been the core that capitalize the need for Ethereum scaling Solution.

Firstly is Network Congestion. With increasing number of new users joining the Ethereum network, more users are participating in transactions, causing high transaction traffic per block at certain times. Looking at the charts, the number of new users joining Ethereum has been increasing from 2017 up to 2021. The cumulative trend also has not shown any indication of plateauing yet.

This has caused the rise on gas fees.

As we can see, the average transaction per block has increased by the year. The gas fee has follow to fit the increasing trend.

Not only that, the average gas fee paid per block is at all time high, at 15.8688 M gwei.

And Max gas fee per block is at whopping 30.31 M gwei, almost 2x that of the average gas fee!

The minimum gas fee has also cemented at 21 K gwei, beginning 2021.

Hello!

Today I would like to share my findings on the performance of Optimism in relation as its role as Ethereum scaling solution.

Optimism is a Layer 2 networks that aims to resolve Ethereum scaling problem. Optimism offers the experience of using the infrastructure on Ethereum Mainnet while offering significantly lower fees. Lets delve right in.

The 2nd Problem is ETH as gas currency. In addition to network congestion, causing users to bid their transaction to bribe the validators, the rising ETH price has also impacted the price for making transaction on Ethereum.

Looking at the chart on the left, shows the trend of average ETH price vs average transaction made per week. We can see that during the price where ETH peaks, the average transaction drops, and vice versa.

This is bad as this indicates the rising in ETH price disincentivizes users from using products on Ethereum, causing stagnation of activity.

What is Layer 2?

Layer 2 is a protocol built on top of existing blockchain in order to resolve scaling problems by offloading transaction processing mainnet, and validating the transaction via special mechanism, In this example, Optimistic roll up is the validation mechanism for Optimism network. Read more about its validation mechanism here.

Optimism has launched on May 31st, however the data in this section only considers case from June 15th. The data will be updated later on once the database is up to date

Average Transaction Per User over time

Now lets compare the activity on each network.

This section measures average transaction per user each day. This gives us the mean value of the transaction count made on that particular day.

Despite Optimism yields lower gas fees, Optimism users made more transaction on Ethereum Mainnet than on Optimism Network.

While Ethereum Mainnet ranges between 10 to 24 transaction per user each day, Optimism only yields between 4 to 10 transaction per user each day.

However, the Optimism average transaction are showing increasing trend beginning early July 2022.

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Daily Gas Price Comparison

Firstly lets compare the gas price on Optimism vs on the Ethereum Mainnet.

The Optimism gas fee yields at sub 1 gwei most of the days, while Ethereum Mainnet ranges between 72 gwei to 15 gwei. Despite Ethereum gas fee has been decreasing recently, the difference between the two network is astronomically significant.

From this study, we have found that:

• The rising number of transaction per block has caused congestion on Ethereum.
• The number of new wallets joining Ethereum is increasing up to 2021, has shown no sign of plateauing
• The average gas fee paid and max fee gas fee paid is at all time high
• Optimism has managed to offer significantly low fee at sub 1 gwei as oppose to Ethereum’s tens of gweis
• Despite the low fees on Optimism, user has made much more transaction on average on Ethereum Mainnet than on Optimism