Optimism Bridger Destinations (Redux)

Where do people go when they bridge to Optimism from Ethereum? What are the 10 most popular first destinations for users that have just bridged from Ethereum? What has this been for each day in the past month? How has this changed over the last three months? Last six months?

What is Optimism?

Optimism is a fast, stable, and scalable L2 blockchain built by Ethereum developers, for Ethereum developers. Built as a minimal extension to existing Ethereum software, Optimism's EVM-equivalent architecture scales your Ethereum apps without surprises. Optimism is a scaling solution for Ethereum that can support all of Ethereum's Dapps. Instead of running all computation and data on the Ethereum network, Optimism puts all transaction data on-chain and runs computation off-chain, increasing Ethereum's transactions per second and decreasing transaction fees.

Optimism is designed so that users can send arbitrary messages between smart contracts on Optimism and Ethereum. This makes it possible to transfer assets, including ERC20 tokens, between the two networks. The exact mechanism by which this communication occurs differs depending on the direction in which messages are being sent. Optimism uses this functionality in the Standard bridge to allow users to deposit assets (ERC20s and ETH) from Ethereum to Optimism and on also allow withdrawals of the same from Optimism back to Ethereum. Learn more at:

You can perform Optimism bridge transactions at: https://app.optimism.io/bridge

Methodology

In this dashboard, we are going to analyze bridgers’ activity and their popular destinations after bridging from Ethereum to the Optimism. But First, We are going to take a quick look at some overall stats about Optimism bridge and bridges.

The contract address for the Optimism standard bridge is 0x99c9fc46f92e8a1c0dec1b1747d010903e884be1.

Also, we should query both the ethereum.core.ez_token_transfers and ethereum.core.ez_eth_transfers tables for ERC20 and ETH transfers.

For extracting the popular destinations and also emitted events by users, We are going to mainly use optimism.core.fact_event_logs table.

What Does Bridging Mean?

Blockchains can be likened to dreamy, super-advanced islands, each completely isolated in the ocean, but none of these islands are connected to each other. The fact that the islands do not have the ability and power to communicate with each other does not mean that there is no such desire at all. Each of these islands are very luxurious and full of attractive facilities that every traveler would like to use, but these attractive and luxurious facilities are definitely different in each island and maybe someone wants to benefit from the capabilities of another island, while which is sure that he can return to his island in any case. Blockchains used to be like islands separated from each other, but with the help of Bridge they were able to communicate!

To solve such a problem, bridging and bridging solutions were proposed. A word that literally means bridge; A bridge that connects different islands and allows for fast transfer between any blockchain and transfer of different digital currencies through it.

According to the left charts, ETH is the most popular asset on bridge in terms of number of bridges but in terms of volume, USDC currently has a little more volume than ETH and is on the first rank in this terms.

According to the left charts, Transfer is by far the most emitted event by bridgers after bridging. without considering Approval event (which is not manually emitted by users), we can see Deposit and Swap are the next most emitted events by bridgers.

Also in terms of First transaction after bridge, we can see Transfer is the most popular event.

in terms of users count and without considering approval event, we can see also Swap and Deposit actions on the next ranks.

According to the above charts, In almost all months and weeks, Transfer event is the most emitted event by newly bridgers. also we can see in almost all months and weeks, Approval, Deposit and Swap events are on the next ranks.

Since the result is clear and top events are the same in all weeks and months, I have not chart daily and more-detailed data.

Based on the left charts, we can see Uniswap is the most popular destination of bridgers after bridging to Optimism.

Moreover in terms of users count, we can see OP token and Optimism airdrop are the most popular contracts for bridgers to interact with them after bridging their asset to Optimism. (OP token label can be also related to the delegating OP tokens)

Mostly, we can see swap protocols such as Velodrome, 1inch and Uniswap on the list of most popular destinations for Optimism bridgers.

Moreover, we can see destinations such as Hop protocol, DAI token, ETH and USD token on the list especially in users count's chart.

According to the left charts, OP token is the most popular FIRST destination (contract address) for bridgers to interact with it after briding to Optimism.

We can see Uniswap is also one of the most popular destination (and the most popular in terms of users count) among all other destinations of bridgers to Optimism.

the majority of destinations are swap protocols or different assets such as OP, ETH, USDC and SNX.

And on the above charts, we can see top 10 destination of each week and month by newly bridgers to Optimism over time. As we see, destinations such as Uniswap, OP token and Hop Protocol tokens are among the most popular bridgers destinations.

Based on the above pie-charts, DeFi is the most popular destination of bridgers based on the number of transactions after bridging to Optimism. but in terms of users count, we can see most number of bridgers have interacted with Layer2 programs after bridging their asset to Optimism. The second most popular destinations belong to the DEXs (decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, 1inch exchange, Velodrome and …) in terms of user count. but in terms of transactions count, Layer2 destinations are on the second rank and DEXs are on the 3rd rank.

And on these over-time charts, we can see the leading of DEXs, DeFi and Layer2 destination in almost all days over time.

There is a close competition between these 3 destinations but the number of transactions on DeFI destinations is slightly more.

Bridges Overall Stats

Bridgers Stats

Bridgers Emitted Events and Destinations

For this part (main section of the bounty), I am going to extract top emitted events, top destinations (by contract and also destination’s label) of bridgers to Optimism in 2 ways: one is the normal regular way and another (more important) is calculated by the FIRST transaction made by the bridger after bridging.

Since some charts may be hard to read (Because of the plenty of information and different type of destinations) I have tried to visualize charts and data with different types (Bar chart, Area Charts, Normalised) and also decided to show only a few top destinations of each timespan to make charts easy for the audience to read. Beside that, you can simply zoom in the charts by drag-clicking your mouse over the desirable part of your choice to make that part bigger and easier to read.

Summary and Conclusion

There were total 229k bridge transactions made by 186k unique wallets with total 2.3B USD volume.
The number of bridges and bridgers is decraesing over time but the volume of bridges is increasing.
ETH and USDC are by far the most popular assets for bridgers in to get bridged to Optimism. USDC currently has the most volume of bridges in Standard bridge but ETH is on the first rank in terms of the number of bridges and bridgers.
Transfer (1st), Swap and Deposit are the most 3 popular emitted events by newly bridgers to Optimism. (without considering Approval which is not manually emitted by users)
The majority of top popular destinations for bridgers after bridging to the Optimism are swap routers such as Uniswap (as the most popular destination of all time) or Velodrome or 0x Exchange or 1inch Exchange or Clipper. and also tokens such as OP, USDC and ETH. There are also some other bridge protocols such as stargate or NFT marketplaces such as Quixotic among the top popular destinations.
There are also some not labeled contract addresses (0x553e14313730fd8b93db0a30d15608f2c43ff25f, 0xac8e86e00f07548480fc249351e172f7def93f21, and 0xa0cc33dd6f4819d473226257792afe230ec3c67f) among the top popular destinations which there is not any data about them on-web and on explorers but seems they are some swap routers.
DeFi is the most popular destination of bridgers based on the number of transactions after bridging to Optimism. but in terms of users count, most number of bridgers have interacted with Layer2 programs after bridging their asset to Optimism.
In majority of days, DEX, Defi and Layer2 destinations are the most popular destinations of new bridgers to the Optimism.

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Based on the above charts, September and November 2021 were the months with highest number of bridges and active bridgers on Optimism. After these dates, we can see a decreasing trend of bridge activity on Optimism over time.

But in terms of volume, we can see increasing trend over time. Despite high activity of bridges during September and November 2021, there is not any high spikes on these months on volume. This shows that majority of bridge activity during September and November were done with low volume (maybe only for being eligible for the future OP airdrop!)

Till Today (29th October 2022) there were total 229k bridge transactions made by 186k unique wallets with total 2.3B USD volume. The average volume of bridges is 10.03K USD, the median amount is 166.1 USD and the maximum bridge volume is 50M USD.

Moreover, most number of bridges (more than 38% of all bridges) are done with $100 - $1000 volume and there are only 5% of all total bridges which were done with more than $10000 volume.

An average Optimism bridger performs 1.23 bridge transactions with an average volume of 12.36k USD.

Moreover, we can see the user address 0x428ab2ba90eba0a4be7af34c9ac451ab061ac010 is the most active bridger with total 224 bridge transactions while the user address 0x997fd5f16c9717007244e15e1e47db5f37bd53c2 has by far the most volume of bridges (more than 93.7M USD!)

Emitted Events

For this part, I have extracted most emitted events by newly bridgers to the Optimism using the Event_Name column in the optimism.core.fact_event_logs.

For analysing the FIRST actvitity, we should filter transactions to only show the transaction with the minimum time difference after the bridge transaction to the Optimism.

Destinations By The Contract Address That Bridgers Have Interacted With Them

For this part, I have extracted top interacted contracts by newly bridgers to the Optimism using the origin_to_address column in the optimism.core.fact_event_logs.

For extracting the label of these addresses I have used optimism.core.dim_labels and also extracted some missing data, manually and by searching them on the web and Optimism explorer.

For analysing the FIRST actvitity, we should filter transactions to only show the transaction with the minimum time difference after the bridge transaction to the Optimism.

according to the above charts, Uniswap was by far the most popular destination of bridgers before the OP token launch but after May 2022, we can see increasing share of OP token among the top destination of bridgers to Optimism.

Normalised Charts

In the above charts, you could see the total trend of transactions by new bridgers to the Optimism over time. But in this part, I am going to normalize charts to only see the share of each destination on each day during the past month, past 3 months and also the past 6 months over time.

Moreover, since there will be so much data and different destinations for 3 months and 6 months timespans, I am going to limit results for these timespans to only show 5 (for 3 months) and 3 (for 6 months) top popular destinations on each day.

Just simply hold your mouse cursor on each day’s bar to see the destination labels and their shares on each day.

There are some unknown and unlabeled contract addresses such as 0x553e14313730fd8b93db0a30d15608f2c43ff25f, 0xac8e86e00f07548480fc249351e172f7def93f21, and 0xa0cc33dd6f4819d473226257792afe230ec3c67f among top destinations. There is not any data about them on-web and also they are not labeled on Optimism explorer. But, by investigating their transactions, I guess there are related to some swap protocols. So, I have named them “Unknown Swap Protocols” in the charts.

On the above charts, top 10 destinations of each day by 2 terms (number of transactions and number of newly bridgers that interacted with these contracts) over time during the past 30 days.

We can see Uniswap v3 and also protocols such as Velodrome, Project galaxy and Hop protocol and Quixotic NFT marketplace has the most share totally.

On the above charts, we can see Uniswap v3, Project galaxy (after September), Velodrome finance and those mentioned unknown contract addresses (0x553e14313730fd8b93db0a30d15608f2c43ff25f, 0xac8e86e00f07548480fc249351e172f7def93f21, and 0xa0cc33dd6f4819d473226257792afe230ec3c67f) are the top popular destinations of new bridgers to the Optimism in majority of days.

On the above charts, we can see Uniswap is by far the most popular destination of new bridgers to Optimism. There is also high share of Hop protocol: USDC token among the top popular destinations.

And on the above area charts, as mentioned above, we can see DEX, Defi and Layer2 destinations are the most popular destinations of new bridgers to the Optimism in all days over time.

Destinations By Their Label

A Brief about Popular Destinations

Uniswap is a cryptocurrency exchange which uses a decentralized network protocol. Uniswap is also the name of the company that initially built the Uniswap protocol. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts

Hop protocol is a mechanism for transferring tokens over a shared layer 1 network quickly and without trust. It provides customers with a two-pronged token bridge for Ethereum's layer 2 network. The solution aims to facilitate the rapid movement of a token between layer 2 and a scaling solution's governance token

Velodrome Finance is the liquidity base layer for the entire Optimism ecosystem. Launched in June 2022, it focuses on properly incentivizing liquidity for DeFi protocols. Interestingly, Velodrome is built on the foundation put in place by Solidly

Quix (Former Quixotic) is the largest NFT marketplace on Optimism

0x is an open-source, decentralized exchange infrastructure that enables the exchange of tokenized assets on multiple blockchains. Developers can use 0x to incorporate exchange functionality into their applications, and market makers can use 0x to create markets for cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Stargate Finance is a decentralized crypto exchange with modern features that aims to deliver a fully composable native asset bridge. As a liquidity transport protocol, the platform allows users to add liquidity to various pools, stake assets and transfer native assets.

1inch is an exchange aggregator that scans decentralized exchanges to find the lowest cryptocurrency prices for traders, and is powered by its 1INCH utility and governance token. 1INCH is used to furnish the platform's decentralized "instant governance" model, and facilitates liquidity mining through token staking

Synthetix (SNX) is a decentralized asset insurance protocol, and it allows users to mint, hold, and trade a wide range of derivatives – including commodities, fiat currencies, and even stocks. They can also do this for certain cryptocurrencies as well, the most popular being BTC.

OP is the native token of Optimism blockchain which can be delegated, staked or traded by users and is also used for in-chain transactions.

Socket is a complete interoperability stack which allows asset & data transfer across chains, enabling developers to build truly cross-chain apps.

Rubicon is a decentralized finance protocol that facilitates the open, peer-to-peer and similar stuff of on-chain tokens and digital assets.

Rabbithole allows users to discover and use new decentralized apps (d'apps), protocols, or crypto platforms in return for cryptocurrency rewards. Partners can use Rabbithole to distribute tokens to users through proof-of-use and acquire knowledgeable and engaged new users.