Optimism catching up to Arbitrum in L2 race

• Network activity on the Optimism network trended upwards in June.
• The Bedrock upgrade resulted in savings of nearly 75% on each transaction.

A researcher from blockchain analytics firm Nansen took to Twitter to draw attention to the trends developing in the Ethereum [ETH] layer-2 ecosystem.

Realistic or not, here’s OP’s market cap in BTC’s terms

The researcher compared the network activity of optimistic rollups like Optimism [OP] and Arbitrum [ARB], and came up with some interesting findings.

Optimism outpaces Arbitrum

A noticable divergence was seen in the growth trajectory of daily active addresses. Arbitrum, which saw an astronomical spurt at the time of its AirDrop, witnessed a steady decline in its wallets’ activity. On the other hand, daily active addresses on the Optimism network trended upwards in June.

Source: Nansen

A similar story was seen when it came to the number of transactions on each of the networks. While transactions on Arbitrum trended sideways for much of June, Optimism’s transactional activity registered a sharp spike.

Source: Nansen

Bedrock turning things around?

The recently executed Bedrock upgrade created a world of difference for Optimism users as far as network costs are concerned. The enhancement, which primarily focused on lowering L1 prices (the cost of posting L2 transactions on Ethereum), resulted in savings of nearly 75% on each transaction, according to Dune.

For context, the average gas fees on the network in the legacy system was around $0.57. After the Bedrock upgrade, this came down to an average of $0.14.

Source: Dune

As a result, while the overall transaction count has increased, the total fees paid to get them validated have come down drastically, considered as the holy grail for any scaling solution.

Source: Dune

Further examination revealed that these enhancements brought Optimism’s fees well below those of Arbitrum. According to L2 Fees, it required $0.10 for token swapping on Optimism as compared to $0.19 on Arbitrum.

How much are 1,10,100 OPs worth today?

Interest in OP shoots up

At the time of writing, the governance token OP exchanged hands at $1.32, up nearly 6% in the 24-hour period, as per Santiment. The solid performance registered by the parent blockchain generated renewed demand for the token.

The total number of OP holders increased 16% over the last month. This was a significant jump from the 9% figure recorded for the preceding period.

Source: Santiment