Introduction

Optimism is a fast, stable, and scalable L2 blockchain built by Ethereum developers, for Ethereum developers. Built as a minimal extension to existing Ethereum software, Optimism's EVM-equivalent architecture scales your Ethereum apps without surprises. Optimism is a 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.

Optimism (OP) is the native token of Optimism, OP has a total supply of 4.294 billion. The OP token gives holders participation rights in The Optimism Collective, a two-tier governance system composed of Token House and Citizens’ House. Citizens’ House will come live later in 2022. Token House, which is already active, governs technical decisions related to Optimism, such as software upgrades. The Citizens’ House governs public-goods funding decisions. In its early days, Optimism itself raised funds on Gitcoin, a major public-goods funding platform.

Methodology

In this dashboard, We are going to analyze NFT purchasing behavior on Optimism. For this, we are going to check the distribution of NFT sales on this chain by their price.

The main table that we are using for this bounty is optimism.core.ez_nft_sales. data on this table are only available for Quix (former Quixotic) marketplace (the largest NFT market on Optimism).

In addition to the price_usd column that gives us the USD price of sales, There are 2 distinct currencies for purchasing NFTs on Optimism: ETH and OP. we can calculate daily ETH and OP price using their core.fact_hourly_token_prices tables. Since the bounty question is asking about the ETH volume of sales, we can convert sales with OP currency to ETH currency by dividing the $OP price by the $ETH price on each day.

First, we are going to check some overall data about NFT sales on Optimism.

Then we are going to analyze sales volume distribution (in both ETH and USD) on Optimism.

Then we are going to analyze the distribution of sellers (gained) and buyers (spent) volume on the Optimism NFT ecosystem.

Then, we are going to compare some overall data about the NFT ecosystem in Ethereum and Optimism and say my opinion is there a limit to how high a floor for an NFT collection on Optimism can reach compared to on Ethereum?

Overall Stats

Sales Distribution

Based on the above charts, the most number of NFT sales on Optimism (almost 70% or 90,000 sales out of total 128,000 sales) are done with less than 0.01 ETH (or less than 10 USD). So, as mentioned above, the NFT sales on Optimism is way lighter than Ethereum.

But during the recent weeks and as time goes on, we can see quite increasing activity of NFT sales on Optimism compared to the first months of the over-time charts. Moreover, we can see an increasing share of sales with 0.01 - 0.1 ETH ($10 - $100) volume over time and this means the NFT ecosystem and the floor and average price of tokens on Optimism are growing more and more over time and this can be quite good news for this ecosystem.

The highest number of Sales with more than 1 ETH on Optimism has achieved in September. Also, the highest number of sales with 0.1 - 1 ETH volume was achieved on June 2022.

Totally, the increasing cumulative share of sales with higher volume is clearly visible on the charts.

Total Spent or Gained Volume by Buyers and Sellers

Based on the above charts, the most number of NFT buyers on Optimism have spent totally less than 0.01 ETH (less than $10) for purchasing NFTs.

On the other hand, the most number of NFT sellers on Optimism has also gained totally less than 0.01 ETH from selling NFTs. Totally, sellers slightly have gained more volume from selling NFTs than buyers spent volume for purchasing them.

There are only 612 purchasers (almost 1% of total purchasers) that have spent more than 1 ETH for buying NFTs.

On the other hand, there are only 575 sellers (almost 1% of total sellers) that have gained more than 1 ETH from selling NFTs.

So, we can maybe conclude most number of NFT traders on Optimism are fishes (users with low volume of transactions) and there is less Whale activity on this ecosystem.

Ethereum vs Optimism

For this part, First, I am going to chart some overall data for comparing NFT ecosystem on Ethereum vs Optimism. Considering that Ethereum is way elder than Optimism and Optimism has a way long way to even get close to Ethereum in terms of NFT sales.

We can see the total number of NFT sales, total number of buyers, total number of sellers, average volume of sales, total volume of sales, all and all on Ethereum are way more than Optimism.

On the left chart, we can see most number of NFT sales on Ethereum are done with $100 - $1000 volume while on Optimism, most number of NFT sales are done with less than $10. This can be because of way more Whale and high-wealthy users activity on Ethereum NFT ecosystem compared to the Optimism.

According to the left chart, We can maybe conclude the average volume of sales (~tokens price) on Optimism are growing a little faster than the average volume of sales (~tokens price) on Ethereum.

P.S: for a fair result, I have limited timespan from start of the year 2022.

Do you think that there is a limit to how high a floor for a NFT collection on Optimism can reach compared to on Ethereum?

To answer this question, we should consider several factors.

• Ethereum chain is way older than Optimism. So, its NFT ecosystem is also way elder than Optimism. In the first days of the Ethereum NFT ecosystem, NFTs were not this much expensive as they are nowadays, and also their floor price was not high as today. This historical value of Ethereum made this ecosystem to be known as the “Most Expensive NFT Ecosystem” in all chains in the Crypto market. Whoever enters the Ethereum NFT ecosystem knows that he/she should spend much more money for listing/minting/selling/purchasing tokens in this ecosystem. For example, when a cloth buyer enters a “Louis Vuitton” or “Gucci” brand shop, he/she knows that the floor price on these brands’ clothes are way more than most expensive clothes in other shops, So, he/she must pay much higher for buying cloths compared to the other clothing brands, even if their quality is not as good as other brands, just the “Brand Name” make the buyer to think like that and pays more.
• Optimism is faster, more scalable, and more stable than Ethereum because it’s a Layer 2 chain. Moreover, Optimism transactions (including gas prices, and transaction fees) are cheaper compared to Ethereum and thats one of the main reasons that Optimism has totally been created! on Ethereum NFT marketplaces (such as Opensea, LooksRare, and X2Y2) users have to pay much amount of money for just Minting or Listing their NFT on the marketplace and this cause many users to just never mind about it because many of them can not afford these high fees. On the other hand, since these fees are so high, users have to list their NFT with much more price to receive a significant profit from selling tokens. That's why we have seen the most number of Ethereum NFT sales, which are done with high volume ($100 - $1000). While on Optimism, users can easily mint and list their NFT with much cheaper costs, and that’s why we have seen the most number of NFT sales on this ecosystem were made only with less than $10 volume. So, The higher cost of minting and listing NFTs on Ethereum is one of the factors that can push ETH NFT prices up and on the other hand, keep Optimism NFT prices lower, especially for lower-cost collections where the margin is important to the seller.
• Another important factor in the whole NFT ecosystem is “hype”. Although the NFT ecosystem on Optimism is much newer, there has already been some high-profile collection launched on this ecosystem such as Explorer, Optimistics, Early Optimists and OP orca with high floor prices compared to the other collections. So, Optimism has shown that its projects can also build as much hype as on Ethereum.
• So, the NFTs’ floor prices on Optimism have a very long way to go in comparison to Ethereum than it is at the moment. this can be both good and bad. Good because users can feel free to trade NFTs without having to worry about their mint price or fees or gas, even if they get less profit, they can perform much more traders. Bad because the total value of this ecosystem is always less than Ethereum and this can impact on its value, security and other things.
• in summary, we can say if users want Higher throughput, higher scalability, and a growing ecosystem with low fee prices and a more bright and interesting future, then Optimism would be the better option for them. but if they are going to access a larger and more mature market, with high network security and higher prices for your NFTs, Ethereum is the best market for you for sure.
• Totally, I do not expect Optimism NFTs floor price to reach Ethereum’s floor prices because of its Functional instinct, at least in the long term. but in some cases and collections such as OP Orca, there is hope to reach high floor prices.

Conclusion

According to the above analysis:

• The most number of NFT sales on Optimism are done with only less than 0.01 ETH (less than 10 USD) volume. But, as time goes on, the number of NFT sales with higher prices (especially sales with 0.01 - 0.1 ETH or $10 - $100) is growing more and more.
• The most number of NFT buyers on Optimism have spent totally less than 0.01 ETH (less than $10) for purchasing NFTs.
• The most number of NFT sellers on Optimism has also gained totally less than 0.01 ETH from selling NFTs.
• The average NFT sales volume on Optimism is way less than Ethereum since Ethereum is way more mature, older, more expensive, and more secure than Optimism.
• There is way more “Whale” activity on Ethereum’s NFT Ecosystem compared to Optimism.
• The growth rate of NFTs’ floor price on Optimism is kinda more than Ethereum especially during recent weeks.
• There can be a limit for the floor prices of NFTs on Optimism to reach high prices like Ethereum NFTs in the near future but some collections may cross this limit in the future.

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On the left, first, I have extracted the most expensive sold NFT in a day on Optimism and Ethereum, then compared its growth rate (% wise) to the most expensive solf NFT on previous day in both blockchains and charted the results.

As we see, the high spikes (more growth rate of most expensive sold NFT compared to the previous day) on Optimism are more than Ethereum.

However, a 200% growth in maximum sale volume on Ethereum is way heavier than a 1000% growth in maximum sale volume on Optimism.

Totally, this can also be conclude that Floor price of Optimism is growing with a faster speed than Ethereum.

According to the above charts, the NFT ecosystem on Optimism is less-wealthy than Ethereum since we can see the average and median volume of sales on this chain is not too high and also the maximum sale volume on Optimism (most expensive NFT sold) is like $11.93k. But in Ethereum, we have collections such as Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club which sometimes even their floor price is more than the maximum NFT sale volume on Optimism. or for example, one of the Cryptopunks (#5822) was sold for 8000 ETH (23.7M USD) which is way higher than total NFTs sales volume on Optimism! (but don’t forget that Optimism NFT ecosystem is way newer than Ethereum and maybe comparing them at the moment is not correct)

On the left chart and as a proof to the previous description, we can see (especially during recent weeks) that the growth ratio of most expensive sales on Optimism is kinda overtaking Ethereum over time and this shows the faster growth of this ecosystem in this terms.