Introduction

• In this analysis, You will read about Two major and Popular Layer2 chains, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

• It finally happened. The great Flip everyone’s been waiting for — Optimism and Arbitrum have officially surpassed Ethereum in combined transaction volume.

• I went through these two chains and analyzed these parameters:

  • New Users and Transactions

  • Transferred Volume

  • Swaps and NFTs

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Analyzed by Hess - Reading Time Almost 10 Min.

What is Arbitrum?

• Ethereum is the 2nd largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. However, network congestion and high fees have hampered its exponential growth. Arbitrum aims to reduce transaction fees and congestion by moving as much computation and data storage off Ethereum’s main blockchain (layer 1) as possible. Storing data off Ethereum’s blockchain is known as a Layer 2 scaling solution. 

• Source:

Transactions

Like the previous part, I added Ethereum and Layer 2s ( Optimism and Arbitrum) to the below chart. The line is optimism and arbitrum transactions.

• For the first time, On November 9, The total number of transactions of Optimism and Arbitrum ( Layer 2s ) flipped Ethereum. On that day, The total number of transactions on Ethereum was 1.2M, and the total number of transactions on these two chains was 1.37. about 1.7M higher than Ethereum.
• Only for one day, Layer 2s transactions became higher than. Again Ethereum took its place quickly. However, There were some ups and downs between them. Optimism and Arbitrum transactions together became higher than Ethereum after December 15. Now, I can say These two chains have more transactions than Ethereum.
• Ethereum had 19.5M transactions during the New Year, and Layer2s had 19.2M transactions. Between Optimism and Arbitrum, Optimism had 1M transactions higher than Arbitrum.

ETH Transfers

Now It’s time to compare Optimism and Arbitrum separately from the Ethereum chain. I examined the total daily transferred ETH in US dollars in the last six months.

• On August 2022, the ETH volume on Optimism was much higher than Arbitrum. Still, after September, The ETH volume on Arbitrum increased significantly, and from That time until now, Arbitrum always had a higher volume than Optimism. The interesting is that the average ETH volume on both chains was similar.

Swaps

So far, I examined Users, Transfers and ETH transferred volume on Optimism and Arbitrum. Also, I compared some of them with Ethereum. Now, It’s time to examine swap activities on these two popular chains.

• Until December 2022, The total daily number of unique swappers on Arbitrum was higher than Optimism. Between Late October and November, Swappers on Arbitrum increased more than ever and increased its difference from Optimism. But after December, The total daily number of swappers on Optimism increased and flipped Arbitrum.
• Overall, Arbitrum had 656K Unique swappers, and Optimism had 564K unique swappers in the last six months.

NFT sales

In my opinion, Only Solana can compete with Ethereum in NFTs. NFTs on Optimism and Arbitrum weren’t popular enough. Their native marketplaces, like Quix and Stratos, announced they would shut down their projects, and users can trade NFTs on Opensea. However, it needs more time to understand better.

• The daily share of NFT transactions on Optimism and Arbitrum had too many ups and downs. Some days, The share of transactions on Optimism increased, and some days decreased. Recently, Arbitrum's share decreased from 50% to 15%, and its Optimism share increased from 50% to 85%.
• Overall, 41.9$ of total transactions were on Arbitrum, and 58.1% were on Optimism.

Conclusion

• Arbitrum had 1.4M New Users, and Optimism had 1.1M New users in the last 180 days.

• Since November, Optimism and Arbitrum transactions flipped Ethereum in the number of transactions. However, There were too many ups and downs, but after December, They flipped to Ethereum completely.

• 70% of the transferred ETH volume was on Arbitrum, and 30% was on Optimism.

• The Average transferred ETH volume on Arbitrum was 160M and 70M on Optimism per day.

• Arbitrum had 650K swappers, and Optimism had 550K in the last six months.

• Arbitrum users had an average of 4 swaps, and Optimism users had 6.

• 58% of NFTs transactions were on Optimism, and 42% were on Arbitrum.

• Until November, Arbitrum had more buyers and sellers, but Optimism took its place after that.

• The total sales volume on Arbitrum is 9.6M US dollars and 5.8M US dollars on Optimism.

• The average price of NFTs on Arbitrum is 26$ and 7.6$ on Optimism.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

ALL CODES AND CONTENTS WERE WRITTEN BY HESS.

:bird: Twitter: @0xhess

:t-rex: Discord: hess#0890

:calendar: Analyze Date: 2022/JAN/20

What is Optimism?

• Optimism is a Layer 2 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.

• Source:

Method

• I divided my findings into five key categories.

  • New Users

    We don’t have the wallet creation date on these chains. So, I extracted the first transactions of users with min function. Then, I counted the total daily number of users in the last year. Also, I summed Optimism and Arbitrum together and called Layer 2s.

  • Transactions

    Optimism, Arbitrum, and Ethereum chains have a Transactions table. All I needed was to count the total transactions.

  • ETH Transfers

    I examined daily ETH transfers on Optimism and Arbitrum in USD from the ETH Transfer table.

  • Swaps

    We don’t have a Price table or Swap table on Arbitrum. So, It wasn’t possible to extract all token prices. So, I only examined swappers and the number of swaps on Arbitrum and Optimism.

  • NFTs

    Almost both Optimism and Arbitrum. Native marketplaces announced they no longer support NFTs, and users can trade on Opensea. So, I found Opensea contracts addresses on Arbitrum and Optimism and then, Compared these two chains.

Full Analysis

New Users

To understand the new users’ comparison, I added Ethereum and Layer 2s ( Optimism + Arbitrum ) in the chart below.

• Ethereum is one of the old and most popular chains on Cryptomarket. But Optimism and Arbitrum have one year old. Optimism and Arbitrum are under Ethereum EVM.
• The chart below shows that, Until the New year 2023, The total daily number of new users on Ethereum had a huge difference from Optimism and Arbitrum.
• During the previous year, The total daily number of new users on Ethereum was 50K-100K but On Optimism and Arbitrum was below 10K most of the time. A day before the New year, The total daily number of new users on Layer2s was 44K, and Ethereum was 51K. The difference became lower for the first time.
• Between Optimism and Arbitrum, Arbitrum had more new users in the last six months. However, After the New Year, the number of new users on Optimism became higher than Arbitrum.

• I examined the average number of new users per chain and Layer 2s before and after the New year. The average number of new users on Ethereum was 79K before New Year and 64K after New year. On the other side, The average number of new users on Layer 2s ( Optimism and Arbitrum ) was 13K in 2022 and 16K in 2023.

The number of active users on Ethereum is much higher than Arbitrum and Optimism. But, As you may know, Fees on Ethereum are 6-7x higher than Optimism and Arbitrum.

• The average number of transactions per user on Ethereum is nearly 3, while on Arbitrum, Optimism is around 10.

Based on the daily share of transactions, You can see how Layer 2s ( Optimism and Arbitrum ) transactions share increased. Until March, They had only 3% of shares. After two months, The share of Layer 2s transactions increased and reached 14%. These two chains only needed three months to flip the Ethereum chain. On December and January, The share of Optimism and Arbitrum transactions increased to 50%.

Overall, 69.9% of ETH volume was on Arbitrum, and 30.1% of ETH volume was on Optimism in the last 180 days.

• The average transferred volume on Arbitrum is 167M US dollars, and 72M US dollars on Optimism per day.
• I drew a Monthly chart since June 2022. As you can see, All month, Arbitrum was in the first place, and Optimism was in second place. In August 2022, ETH volume on Optimism was 3.4B US dollars and 690M on Arbitrum. The highest transferred Volume was in September and November for Arbitrum and August and November for Optimism.
• The daily share of ETH volume on Optimism and Arbitrum had too many ups and downs. Since December 2022, The share of ETH on Arbitrum increased more than other months.

Unlike the number of swappers, the share of swap transactions on Optimism was higher than Arbitrum Between August and October. But after that time, The daily share of swap transactions on Arbitrum increased and took Optimism share. Again, Day by day, The daily share of swap transactions increased from 40% to 55-65%.

• Overall, Optimism had 50.7% of total swaps, and Arbitrum had 49.3%.

Between August and October, Optimism swappers were more active than Arbitrum swappers. The average number of swaps per user on Optimism was 5-15 swaps and on Arbitrum was 3-5 swaps. But after September, Arbitrum users became more active, and Optimism users decrease their activities.

I don’t know why but it seems Arbitrum has more users than Optimism, but optimism users have more transactions. When we talk about users, Arbitrum is in the first place, but when we talk about Transactions, Optimism is in the first place.

• Until November 23, The total daily number of buyers and sellers on Arbitrum was a little higher than Optimism, but after that, Optimism buyers and sellers increased and Became much higher than Arbitrum.

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• If we ignore some days in September, Arbitrum had more volume than Optimism on all days. The NFT sales volume on Arbitrum and Optimism wasn’t too much compared to popular other chains like Solana or Ethereum. The highest sales volume was on December 23 on Arbitrum, which was 1M US dollars.