Overview

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution chain for Ethereum. It functions on top of the Ethereum mainnet (layer 1), while transactions take place on Optimism. It increases the speed of transactions and decreases the fees of transactions using Ethereum.

With the so-called 'Ethereum Merge', it comes the question of how it is affected Layer 2 blockchains such as Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism?

The Ethereum merge will reduce Ethereum’s enormous carbon footprint, by switching the validation system from PoW to PoS. However, this significant change will not solve the scalability and high transaction fee problem of the Ethereum blockchain. This implies that the Layer 2 solutions will remain relevant to the blockchain world.

The Ethereum token is the center of health of layer 2 solutions including Optimism. Also stablecoins are instrumental to defi sector of any blockchains.

This dashboard presents the volume of ETH and three stablecoins that's moved between the Optimism network and the Ethereum network across the bridge.

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USDC

The data shows that the flow of USDC in and out of Optimism has been decreased since the beginning of August 2022.

USDT

DAI

DAI flow has decreased since the its peak on August 4th.

Ethereum

The data shows the highest ETH inflow occurred on August 4th 2022. Since then the volume of flow has increased.

Method and Data

In addition to ETH, this dashboard focuses on the following three stablecoins: USDC, USDT and DAI.

To measure the in and outflows of the abovementioned tokens, optimism.core schema and fact_token_transfers and ez_eth_transfers have been used.

Once a token is transferred out of an Optimsim bridge it is considered as OUTFLOW and when it is transferred to an Optimism bridge from the Ethereum blockchain it is considered as INFLOWS.

Stablecoins

This section shows the outflow and inflow of stablecoins over time.

We can see that USDC is a dominant token in terms of volume bridging to and out Optimism. It can be also seen that the inflows and outflows is decreasing.

Conclusion and Summary

The data shows that while DAI and USDT is leaving Optimism, Ethereum locked on Optimism is increasing. However, the flow of Ethereum into Optimism has been stabled since August 4th.

USDC had also in overall a growing trend. However, since August 4th its flow has decreased sharply.