Introduction

Ethereum has grown to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, thanks in large part to its support for smart contracts-which underpins a growing ecosystem of decentralized applications (dapps) and decentralized financial platforms (DeFi). Optimism is one such scaling solution. \n \n Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that uses Optimistic Rollups to process a large number of transactions outside the Ethereum blockchain. The project claims it can trade smart contracts five to 500 times cheaper than Ethereum layer 1. It speeds up Ethereum transactions and reduces their costs by settling them on another blockchain using advanced data compression techniques

One of the main type of platforms used to use Optimism are the bridging platforms, that are being used to pass tokens from L1 platforms to L2. In this case, the most common one are Hop protocol that brings the possibility to bridge from Ethereum mainnet to Optimism network among others.

Methodology

The intention of this dashboard is to provide a deep analysis about the bridge destinations when someone tries to bridge from Ethereum to Optimism network.

The main features to be analyzed are:

• Basic bridge activity metrics such as active users, bridges and volume bridged
• Where do people go when they bridge to Optimism from Ethereum
• What are the most popular first destinations for users that have just bridged from Ethereum
• Daily top destinations over the past month
• Top tokens swapped after a bridge

Analyzing the results obtained, it can be seen how the number of active users bridgind and the number of bridges show similar trends. There has been several increments on the activity since the start of the bridging from Ethereum to Optimsim. The two most important periods have been from September to November 2021 and from July to September 2022.

It seems that one of the most important moments for the bridge just passed, reaching more than 250 daily bridgers and more than 300 daily bridges. Until now, a total of 17k active users were registered and more than 19k bridges occurred.

Finally, the highest volume activity was registered from final November and initial December 2021 and during the week of May when the UST depegging occurred on Terra.

Global activity metrics

Bridge destination analysis

Looking at the first chart, we can see the distribution of first bridge destination. To be able to see some interesting insights, I have considered only those destinations with more than 100 actions. In the second image, we can see the top 10 destinations after bridge. These are:

• Transfers
• Approvals
• Swaps
• Deposits
• Mints
• Withdrawals
• Delegated votes changed
• Burns
• Issued

The next image provides some visions about how the top 10 destinations evolved over the past month in a daily basis. We can see how until final August, the number of transactions increased but until then, the number has decreased a little bit. From the beginning until the end, there were 3 main actions taken just after the bridge: transfers, approvals and swaps. All of them shown a huge difference of activity against the rest of the destinations. In fact, looking at the 4th chart, we can see how the percentage of share of these three top destinations remained constant over the month.

The last two images show the global metrics. We can see how transfers, approvals and swaps represent almost 80% of the total actions, reaching 856k, 520k and 238k transactions respectively.

This final chart represents the top 10 tokens used bridging from Ethereum to Optimism network in terms of transactions. The volume has also been displayed.

As a result, we can see how there are three main tokens:

• OP (Optimism token)
• USDC Canonical token (USDC Hop Protocol)
• ETH Canonical token (ETH Hop Protocol)

The first one was used in a total of 1144 swaps, moving more than 100 M USD in volume. The other two tokens had similar number of transactions, around 1.5k. The volume has been lower than for OP, 10M USD for USDC and 35M USD for ETH.

The other tokens are BAL, FRAX, LYRA, Qi and SNX.

Key insights

Through this dashboard, we have explored the current stats of the bridges from Ethereum to Optimism network. The most important first destination after a bridge have been studied as well using different approaches. The most important insights extracted from the analysis are the following:

• One of the most important moments for the bridge just passed, reaching more than 250 daily bridgers and more than 300 daily bridges.
• Until now, a total of 18k active users were registered and more than 19k bridges occurred.
• The highest volume activity was registered from final November and initial December 2021 and during the week of May when the UST depegging occurred on Terra.
• The top 10 destinations after bridge are: Transfers, Approvals, Swaps, Deposits, Withdrawals, Delegated votes changed, Issued, Mints and Burns.
• Until final August, the number of transactions increased but until then, the number has decreased a little bit.
• From the beginning of the past month until the end, there were 3 main actions taken just after the bridge: transfers, approvals and swaps.
• Transfers, approvals and swaps represent almost 80% of the total actions, reaching 856k, 520k and 238k transactions respectively.
• Three main tokens are being swapped from Ethereum to Optimism: OP, USDC and ETH. The two last using Hop Protocol.