Since the beginning of the year, Optimism, one of the 2 layers of Ethereum, has seen its number of unique addresses increase by more than 45%. This is an opportunity to take stock of the adoption of this scaling solution.
Optimism sees its adoption progress
Layers 2 are one of the keys to scaling the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. One of them, Optimism (OP), is seeing its adoption grow month after month.
This is characterized in particular by more than 45% of new addresses created since January 1. Today, the network has nearly 3.9 million, and at this rate, the symbolic threshold of 4 million should be crossed during the week:
Figure 1 — Number of unique addresses on Optimism
If the increase is significant from a percentage point of view, the room for improvement is still huge compared to other networks. For example, Arbitrum (ARB), the main competitor, has 7.5 million unique addresses. Taking layers 1 as another benchmark, we counted 328 million unique addresses on the BNB Smart Chain last week, while Ethereum has more than 232 million.
In terms of daily transactions, these have fallen significantly since the heart of the campaign for OP airdrop eligibility, with a high of 800,000. Although these are highly variable from day to day ‘other we can consider a range generally within an average of 200 to 300,000 these last months :
Figure 2 — Number of daily transactions on Optimism
Speaking of activity, a query from Blockwork Research on Dune compares the two main optimistic rollups. Even since the Arbitrum airdrop passed, Optimism remains behind its competitor. For information, on May 20, Arbitrum recorded nearly 160,000 transactions against nearly 53,000 for the second :
Figure 3 — Daily active addresses on Arbitrum and Optimism
👉 To go further — What is a layer 2 on the blockchain?
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Financial data
To complete the analysis of network activity, let’s look at the decentralized finance (DeFi) side of Optimism. To date, layer 2 has 136 applications, and lists a total value locked (TVL) of almost $900 millionmaking it the 6th DeFi blockchain.
Moreover, it will be interesting to note that this TVL remains relatively close to its all-time high (ATH), reached on August 11, 2022 with 1.146 billion dollars:
Figure 4 — TVL of DeFi protocols on Optimism
The decentralized exchange (DEX) Velodrome drags just under 27% of this TVL, or $241.64 million. In the top 10 apps, we find well-known names such as Aave, Uniswap or Curve notably :
Figure 5 — Top 10 DeFi protocols on Optimism
For its part, the OP token is trading at $1.62, down 50% since the ATH at the end of February. This brings the asset to 84th place in the CoinGecko ranking, for a capitalization of 540 million dollars.
If the development of Optimism, like that of the other layers 2 in general, is encouraging, there is still a long way to go before reaching true maturity. However, the data is promising, and it will be interesting to judge its adoption when we are back in the bull market, and the activity within the ecosystem follows the trend.
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Sources: Optimistic Etherescan, DefiLlama, Dune
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I timidly discovered the world of blockchain at the end of 2018 during my quest for financial freedom. Initially invested moderately, it was only two years later that I took the gamble of betting everything on the movement that was taking shape then. I then dedicate 2021 to training myself better to acquire more knowledge and seriousness. As I often like to say: I still have a billion things to learn. And what I do know, I want to share with you.
Vincent Mayor
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