How newcomer Base has rattled Ethereum Layer 2 leaders
- Increased L2 adoption has led to a jump in transaction count across Ethereum Mainnet and major optimistic rollups.
- Due to the launch of friend.tech, Base outperformed Optimism and Arbitrum last week.
The transaction numbers between Ethereum [ETH] Mainnet and major optimistic rollups recently hit their second-highest value ever, IntoTheBlock noted in an 18 August tweet.
Transaction numbers between Ethereum Mainnet & major optimistic rollups just hit their 2nd highest value ever! The total number of transactions is now roughly 3x higher than during the bull market peak #ETH #L2 pic.twitter.com/tV5e6ZIftJ
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) August 18, 2023
According to the on-chain data provider, the total number of transactions between Ethereum, Optimism [OP], Arbitrum [ARB], and newcomer Base surged to approximately three times the level observed “during the bull market peak.”
Base rules over Optimism and Arbitrum
Less than a month old, increased activity on Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network Base in the last week pushed its average daily transactions count above that of Optimism and Arbitrum, data from TheBlock data dashboard revealed.
On-chain analysis of daily transaction counts across the three networks over a 7-day moving average showed that Base’s average daily transactions on 15 August totaled 557,140. Optimism trailed behind with 597,000, while Arbitrum came in third place with a count of 576,000.
Source: TheBlock
In terms of new daily unique addresses, Base outperformed Optimism and Arbitrum within the first six days of its launch. However, with its hype plummeting, this metric has begun a descent.
As of 17 August, Base saw the creation of 24,000 new addresses, while Optimism and Arbitrum recorded 32,000 and 29,000, respectively.
Source: TheBlock
The surge in Base’s usage last week was due to the launch of friend.tech on the L2 network. friend.tech lets users buy and sell tokenized shares of crypto personalities. According to data from Dune Analytics, friend.tech has processed over 450,000 transactions from 35,000 unique users since it launched.
As of this writing, the cumulative count of users on Base stood at 755,471, while the total count of transactions completed so far rested above 10 million.
Source: Dune Analytics
Regarding the total value of assets sent to the network, data from Dune Analytics showed that $236.16 million has been bridged so far. Since its launch, $144 million worth of Ether [ETH] tokens have been bridged to Base. This represents 61% of all assets on the L2 network.
The L2 race continues
The adoption of L2 scaling solutions has increased significantly this year, and Optimism and Arbitrum have seen a significant jump in network activity as a result.
As of 18 August, Optimism had 116,000 active addresses and 592,000 transactions, while Arbitrum recorded 135,000 active addresses and 595,000 transactions.
The war is on between @optimismFND and @arbitrum 🔥
Over the past 6 months, Optimism’s active addresses and daily transactions have been steadily increasing
Yesterday Optimism hit 116k active addresses and 592k txs, compared to Arbitrum’s 135k active addresses and 595k txs pic.twitter.com/yHU8cyQF6X
— Nansen 🧭 (@nansen_ai) August 17, 2023
In terms of total value locked (TVL), Arbitrum’s $6 billion represents 56% of all assets locked within the L2 ecosystem. In the second place, Optimism holds $3 billion in TVL, data from L2Beat showed.
Source: L2Beat
