Question

As noted in a recent piece in Cointelegraph, “Ethereum layer-2 networks, such as Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, have gone through an explosive growth phase over the past couple of months, a trend that is set to continue in 2023.”

Specifically, there’s been a notable increase in the amount of daily active users, volume traded, and more.

Will this growth continue into the new year? Or will L2 growth stagnate as 2023 continues to progress?

Back up your assertions with data.

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The total number of bridges and bridgers of Optimism in the last 90 days are about 91k and 67k respectively. The total volume of bridges are over 373M as you can see in the columns on the right side.
The daily number of bridges and bridgers are pretty similar to each other and close in number too as you can see in the two graphs bellow, On Dec 11th of 2022 Optimism reached the peak of bridge and bridgers number and as you can see the average amount started to drop after Jan 17th. The following days after the mentioned date are not as high as the beginning of the graphs.
Even with the drop in number of bridges and bridgers in the final days of the graphs, we can see the total and average volume of bridges start to rise after Jan 17th specially on Jan 20th which we witnessed the highest average bridge volume amount that reached over 25k, the highest total volume also after Jan 17th was close to 7.5M on Jan 26th.

OPTIMISM Bridge Info

In this final section we have the bridge info of the Arbitrum, like the previous network sections here we can see the number of bridges and bridgers on the left which are 29k and 25k in order with total and average volume of 71.5M and 327k respectively.
It is needless to say that after the huge peak Nov 24th the number of bridges and bridgers started to fall drastically nonstop except some few days which had a small peak.
Same as the numbers, the total volume amount is also in a downhill as you can see in the first graph of the final row, but the average volume looks pretty stable through out the 90 days timespan except Dec 19th and Jan 3rd.

ARBITRUM Bridge Info

POLYGON Bridge Info

Number of bridges and bridgers of Polygon are about 86k and 64k respectively with total volume of 1B and average volume of 669k as you can see on the two sides of this text box (last updated on Jan 30th).
The daily number of bridges and bridgers are pretty steady during the entire timespan but from Dec 15th to 18th we can see a massive rise in their numbers before they got back to the usual average amount. It is important to mention that beside the steady looks of the graphs, we can see that the average numbers start to fall as we progressed through the time span and we can clearly see the drop in number of bridges and bridgers in the final days of the graphs.
The same drop in the amount of bridge numbers can also be seen in the total volume and average volume of the bridges, with a simple look, aside from the sudden peaks, we can see the total and average daily volumes dropping as we progress through the 90 days studied timespan.

General Info About Transactions

In the first section of this article we take a look at the general information about the transactions and the token prices, as you can see in the first graph we have the ETH, OP and MATIC prices which belong to Ethereum, Optimism and Polygon respectively (Arbitrum does not have a token currently).
The prices down bellow start from Oct 31st of 2022 until Jan 29th which is the final day the prices got last updated, ETH started at 1582 on Oct 31st and it took a sharp drop to around 1100 on Nov 22nd and kept oscillating in that area until Jan 8th which we witnessed a rise in its price in that time and it reached back at 1653 on Jan 21st, the ETH price dropped a little by the end of the graph and reached at 1592 on Jan 29th.
The OP token prices ,similar to ETH, kept oscillating around 1 until it managed to get a rise after Jan 8th of 2023. By the end of Jan 29th we can see that it reached 2.15. The MATIC token however did not see much of a difference throughout the whole timespan and we can see its the most steady trend compared to the other token prices, MATIC oscillated around 1 during the whole graph and finally reached 1.14 on Jan 29th of 2023.
The following column graphs are showing the stats of each network in the last 90 days, the first one is showing the number of transactions and as you can see in the first spot we have Polygon with over 270M transactions and the other three networks did not even break the 100M ceiling.
By taking a look at the total block numbers we can see the first spot goes to Optimism with over 38M blocks and after hat we have Arbitrum with 22.3M blocks the other two networks are under the 5M ceiling as you can see.
Once again we have Polygon in the first spot with the TPS column graph, here you can see the Polygon network is at almost 35 while the rest three networks are all under 13.
The final two column graphs are showing the volume of transactions and number of users in the passed 90 days, and Ethereum managed to get the first spot in both with over 4T worth of volume and almost 14M users, even though with the much less number of transactions we can clearly see that Ethereum still

Daily Info About Transactions

In the general info section we saw the total number of transactions of each network in the last 90 days, in the first graph bellow we can see the daily information of each network number of transactions, with ta simple look we can clearly see how Polygon dominated in transaction numbers on each day. The normalized form shows that as we got closer to the final days of the graph not only Polygon got an increase in the number of transactions but also Optimism and Arbitrum managed to get less share than the starting days. The most steady amount of transactions also goes to Ethereum which was close to 20% at all times.
The total blocks are showing that until Jan 17th Optimism had the most number of blocks among the networks named but after that the number block from this network dropped a little and let Arbitrum take the first place as you can see in the normalized form.
Same as the number of transactions, in the third row of graphs we can see the TPS amount in which Polygon takes the first place throughout the timespan, after that we see Ethereum in the first spot and the other two networks amount are much less noticeable and in the final days they only conclude around 15% of the total TPS amount between networks.
After TPS we have the daily number of users in the following graphs, since the beginning until the end we have the Ethereum and Polygon in the first and second spot of the user numbers respectively. In the first half of the graph we can see that Ethereum had the first spot with a noticeable distance from Polygon but in the second half polygon managed to take the first spot by overcoming Ethereum in terms of user numbers.
Last but not least we have the daily transactions volume in the final row which honestly does not need any explanation, you can clearly see the Ethereum owning around 95% of the total transactions volume between the networks throughout the graphs timespan.

Conclusion:

In this dashboard we have the Ethereum’s second layer networks and they progress throughout the recent days, here we tried to cover the overall stats and how these networks functioned and some of these information look actually pretty promising.
First and foremost we showed the prices of tokens and we saw that The OP token had a good progress in its price rise but this is not necessary info but I just wanted to point at it for a starting info. In the following column graphs of the first section we have the total number of transactions, users, volume of transactions, blocks and TPS for each network and as you can see Ethereum is the number one in both number of users and volume of transactions which is not surprising given the history of Ethereum’s work. Looking at the stats of the other three networks which are the main points of interest of this topic, we can see that Polygon has the highest number of transactions, TPS and users in the last 90 days and the only category that it fails at is the number of blocks which Optimism and Arbitrum come out on the top two spots with a great distance. also the total volume of Arbitrum transactions is more than Polygon by a small amount.
The daily amount of named parameters also point out the progress of polygon between the studied networks as you can see in the second section of the article, again except the blocks numbers which Arbitrum and Optimism are dominating at currrently.
The final three parts of the article are showing us the bridge info of Polygone, Arbitrum and Optimism. Honestly with the info given in the final three parts personally I think that Arbitrum is so behind the other two networks because not only the number and volume of bridges are much less in this network but also it is getting worse throughout the time as we are moving forward. Polygon has by far the most number of bridges and bridgers after Optimism compared to arbitrum but the distance between Optimism and Polygon is not that much in this case. with that being said it is worth mentioning that aside Polygon having the most amount of bridge volume, the daily number and volume of bridges in Polygon is in a downhill trend and they are rapidly reducing over time. But the daily amount of total and average volume of Optimism’s bridges are increasing since the beginning of the last 90 days as you can see.
Overall, the Optimism and Polygon networks are in a better shape currently even with polygon being in a reducing state when we take a look at the daily volume amount or the daily number of bridges. With that being said I guess the Optimism and Polygon are most likely to keep their progress in the current year and it is possible for them to get even better judging by the stats. But Arbitrum is not looking to good it its current state not to mention that the number of bridges and their volume are rapidly falling

Appendix

Author: Hojjat

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Discord: hojjat7878#8809

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Twitter: @hojjat8d

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Email: hojjat78delshad@gmail.com

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