Try Quests to earn cryptoEVM - 4. The “Flippening” Comparison
Description of work
On Jan 10, Optimism and Arbitrum flip Ethereum in combined transaction volume. (cointelegraph.com)
Because of this historic event, we want to compare these two major L2 chains from different perspectives.
This dashboard includes the following sections:
a - Definitions
- Comparison of the number of transactions.
- Comparison of transaction fees.
- Comparison of Transactions Per Second (TPS).
- Comparison of block time.
- Comparison of transactions success rate.
- Comparison of the number of users (daily users/ new users/ active users).
- Comparison of swap activities.
- Conclusion
a - Definitions
Introducing Optimism and Arbitrum
Optimism and Arbitrum are Layer 2s scaling solutions for Ethereum that can support all of Ethereum’s Dapps.
Layer 2 refers to a network or technology that operates on top of an underlying blockchain protocol to improve its scalability and efficiency.
Instead of running all computation and data on the Ethereum network, Optimism and Arbitrum put all transaction data on-chain and run computation off-chain, increasing Ethereum’s transactions per second and decreasing transaction fees.
Source: gemini.com, zerocap.com
What are transaction fees?
Crypto transaction fees are paid when you do an action on a blockchain. Actions can range from simple things such as sending a cryptocurrency or digital asset to someone, to using a DApp to execute a complicated program like taking out a loan.
In almost all cases, transaction fees are paid in a blockchain’s native crypto asset. Bitcoin transaction fees are paid in bitcoin and Ethereum transaction fees are paid in Ethereum. As you’d expect, simpler actions have smaller fees while complicated actions cost more. Additionally, different blockchains have lower or higher transaction fees for similar actions.
Source: bitcoin.com
What Is block Time?
Block time is the measure of the time it takes the miners or validators within a network to verify transactions within one block and produce a new block in that blockchain.
Source: investopedia.com
- You can change the timespan of results and charts using the “Timespan“ drop-down list at the top side of the dashboard.
- All queries in this dashboard are set to run every 24 hours
- All observations in this dashboard are based on the last 90-day timespan
✔️Observations
-
The total number of transactions on Arbitrum (53.01M transactions) is 37.6% higher than the number of transactions on Optimism (38.52M transactions) in the last 90 days.
-
Since the beginning of December (December 6), the number of transactions on Optimism has increased and is in an upward trend, Also, on the other side, the number of transactions on the Arbitrum chain has had a downward trend since December 2022.
-
The total number of transactions performed on Arbitrum has surpassed the total number of transactions performed on Optimism on October 8, 2022.
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On December 31 and January 1, the number of transactions on both chains decreased drastically.
-
The public rehearsal of the migration of Optimism Goerli to Bedrock can be one of the reasons for the increase in the number of transactions on the Optimism chain. This news was announced on December 6.
- Optimism's official Twitter account described Bedrock as a game-changing Optimism upgrade.
- You can read more details about Bedrock upgrade at: How is Bedrock Different?
2 - Comparison of transaction fees.
Methodology
- To calculate transaction fees (in Ether),
TX_FEEfield from[optimism.core.fact_transactions]and[arbitrum.core.fact_transactions]tables used. - In Optimism and Arbitrum, fees are paid in Ether
- To convert the transaction fees to USD, the Ether price has been obtained from
[ethereum.core.fact_hourly_token_prices]
✔️Observations
-
fees spent per transaction in Optimism in the last 90 days are always higher than the fees spent per transaction in Arbitrum.
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On November 8, 9, and 10, 2022, the average fee spent per transaction on Optimism has been increased drastically.
-
The average fee spent per transaction on Optimism (0.13$) is 2.6X higher than the average fee spent per transaction on Arbitrum (0.05$) in the last 90 days.
-
The total fees spent for transactions on Optimism ($5.154M) in the last 90 days are 1.93X higher than the total fees spent for transactions on Arbitrum ($2.67M).
✔️Observations
-
In the last 90 days until the end of December, Arbitrum's TPS was higher than Optimism's TPS on most days,
but since late December onwards, with the increase in the number of transactions performed on Optimism (mentioned in section 1), Optimism's TPS has surpassed Arbitrom's TPS.
-
The average daily TPS of Arbitrum (7) is 40% higher than the average daily TPS of Optimism.
4 - Comparison of block time
Methodology
- To calculate block time related to each chain, data from
[optimism.core.fact_blocks]and[arbitrum.core.fact_blocks]tables used.- A detailed explanation of how to calculate Block time is available in my previous dashboard - Polygon Block Performance
✔️Observations
-
According to the charts, we can conclude that block time is inversely proportional to the number of transactions.
-
In the last 90 days, since November, Arbitrum's block time has always been higher than Optimism's block time.
-
The average daily block time of Arbitrum (0.34 seconds) is 70% higher than the average daily block time of Optimism(0.2 seconds).
✔️Observations
-
Over the past 90 days, on almost all days, the transaction success rate on Arbitrum has been higher than Optimism.
-
On November 8 and 9, when the number of transactions on Optimism grew rapidly, the transaction success rate dropped sharply and reached 84%.
-
On December 30, 2022, with a 33.72% increase in the number of transactions compared to the previous day, the success rate of transactions decreased sharply and reached 80.23% from 95.81% om Arbitrum.
-
The average transaction success rate in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(97.3%) is 1.7% higher than Optimism(95.6%).
3 - 6 - Comparison of the number of active users
Methodology
What is an Active user?
we consider an Active user as an address that has at least one transaction in at least 5 days (6 days or the whole week) of a week. When an address continuously has at least one transaction in at least 5 days of each week, it means: This address has had at least one transaction on at least 71.43% ( (5/7) *100 = 71.43 ) of the days since its first day of activity.
When we calculate the number of active users on a daily basis, an address may be considered as an active user on one day and not as an active user on other days.
For example:
- Consider an address in a 100-day time frame that makes a transaction every day from the first day to the 72nd day. In this work, this address is considered an active user from the 5th day to the 77th day, but after the 77th day, even though it had at least one transaction in more than 71.42% of days, it is not considered an active user because at least in A week has had less than 5 transactions per day. (time period between 72nd and 77th day)
The following SQL code finds the number of active users on a daily basis (in Optimism).
WITH First_Activity AS (
SELECT TX_HASH AS "User", MIN(BLOCK_TIMESTAMP::DATE) "First Activity"
FROM optimism.core.fact_transactions
GROUP BY "User"
),
Activity AS (
SELECT BLOCK_TIMESTAMP::DATE AS DAYS, TX_FROM AS "User"
FROM optimism.core.fact_transactions
WHERE DAYS BETWEEN (SELECT TIME_INTERVAL FROM GET_INPUT_TIME_INTERVAL) AND CURRENT_DATE-1
GROUP BY DAYS, "User"
),
Daily_Activity AS (
SELECT DAYS, First_Activity."User", "First Activity", 1 AS "Temp"
FROM First_Activity JOIN Activity USING("User")
),
Daily_Activity_Details AS (
SELECT DAYS, "User", "First Activity", DATEDIFF(DAY, "First Activity", DAYS) +1 AS "Account Current Age",
SUM("Temp") OVER (Partition By "User" ORDER by DAYS ASC ROWS BETWEEN unbounded preceding AND CURRENT ROW) "Current Active Days",
"Current Active Days"/"Account Current Age" AS "Current Threshold"
FROM Daily_Activity
ORDER BY DAYS ASC
),
REMOVE_NEW_USERS_ACTIVITIES AS (
SELECT DAYS, "User", "First Activity", "Account Current Age", "Current Active Days", "Current Threshold"
FROM Daily_Activity_Details
WHERE "Current Active Days" > 4
),
Check_Last_Activity AS (
SELECT DAYS, "User", "First Activity", "Account Current Age", "Current Active Days", "Current Threshold",
"Account Current Age" - LAG("Account Current Age", 1, 0) OVER (PARTITION BY "User" ORDER BY DAYS) AS "Diffrence Between Current Activity and Last Activty"
FROM REMOVE_NEW_USERS_ACTIVITIES
ORDER BY DAYS ASC),
Active_Users AS (
SELECT DAYS, "User", "First Activity", "Account Current Age", "Current Active Days",
"Diffrence Between Current Activity and Last Activty" ,"Current Threshold"
FROM Check_Last_Activity
WHERE "Diffrence Between Current Activity and Last Activty" < 6 --If a user has no activity in a week, it is not considered as an active user
AND "Current Threshold" >= 0.7142
ORDER BY DAYS ASC)
SELECT DAYS, COUNT("User") "Number of active users"
FROM Active_Users
GROUP BY DAYS
✔️Observations
-
For the first time in the last 90 days, on December 20, the number of daily users on Optimism surpassed the number of daily users on Arbitrum.
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-
Since the beginning of December (December 6), the number of daily users on Optimism has increased and is in an upward trend, Also, on the other side, the number of transactions on the Arbitrum chain has had a downward trend since December 15.
-
On December 20th and 21st, the number of daily users of Optimism increased dramatically, from 41.223K users on December 19th to 64.205K users on December 20th and 111.224K users on December 21st.
-
The average number of daily users in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(56.7K users) is 22% higher than Optimism(46.5K users).
✔️Observations
-
Until December 17, the number of daily active users of Optimism has always been higher than the number of daily active users of Arbitrum. But from December 18 onwards (except for January 19), this trend has been reversed.
\
-
The highest number of daily active users was recorded on December 31 (3926 users) and belongs to Optimism.
-
The average daily number of active users in the last 90 days on Optimism(1328 users) is 15.68% higher than the average daily number of active users on Arbitrum(1148 users).
✔️Observations
-
Until the beginning of December, the number of new users on Arbitrum has always been higher than the number of new users on Optimism. But from the beginning of December onwards (except for the last 10 days of December), this trend has changed and the number of new users on these two chains is not significantly different.
- In the last 10 days of 2022, the number of new users on the Optimism chain has increased sharply and has a significant difference from the number of new users on the Arbitrum chain.
-
The average daily number of new users in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(10.44K users) is 14.6% higher than Optimism(9.11K users).
-
The total number of unique addresses that performed transactions on Arbitrum (2.04M unique addresses) is 26.86% more than the total number of unique addresses that performed transactions on Optimism(1.608M unique addresses).
✔️Observations
-
In the last 90 days, until the end of December, the number of swaps on Arbitrum was more than the number of swaps on almost all days, but from the end of December onwards, this trend has been reversed.
-
The average number of daily swaps in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(84.7K swaps) is 14.6% higher than Optimism(76.8K swaps).
-
In the last 90 days, the share of swap transactions from the total number of transactions has been higher on Optimism compared to Arbitrum on almost all days.
\
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The average share of transactions from the total number of transactions in the last 90 days on Optimism(18.94%) is 4.88% higher compared to Arbitrum.(14.06%)
Conclusion
In this dashboard, we compared two of the most popular L2s in detail. The following results have been obtained:
-
After the announcement of "The public rehearsal of the migration of Optimism Goerli to Bedrock" on December 6, the number of transactions on Optimism has started to increase and is in an upward trend.
\
-
This upward trend has led to a higher number of daily transactions on Optimism compared to Arbitrum for the first time in the last 90 days on December 17.
\
-
The increase in the number of transactions in Optimism has increased the transaction fees, the network’s TPS, and the number of active users, and decreased the transactions success rate.
-
In contrast to this growth in the Optimism chain, the amount of activities has decreased in the compared criteria in the Arbitrum chain, and it can be concluded that in the last 45 days, Optimism has acquired a part of Arbitrum's share.
-
In the last 90 days:
-
The total number of transactions on Arbitrum (53.01M transactions) is 37.6% higher than the number of transactions on Optimism (38.52M transactions).
- On December 31 and January 1, the number of transactions on both chains decreased drastically.
\
-
fees spent per transaction in Optimism are always higher than the fees spent per transaction in Arbitrum.
-
The total fees spent for transactions on Optimism ($5.154M) are 1.93X higher than the total fees spent for transactions on Arbitrum ($2.67M).
-
The average fee spent per transaction on Optimism (0.13$) is 2.6X higher than the average fee spent per transaction on Arbitrum (0.05$).
\
-
-
The average transaction success rate in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(97.3%) is 1.7% higher than Optimism(95.6%).
\
-
The average number of daily users in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(56.7K users) is 22% higher than Optimism(46.5K users).
\
-
The average daily number of new users in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(10.44K users) is 14.6% higher than Optimism(9.11K users).
\
-
The average daily number of active users in the last 90 days on Optimism(1328 users) is 15.68% higher than the average daily number of active users on Arbitrum(1148 users).
\
-
The average number of daily swaps in the last 90 days on Arbitrum(84.7K swaps) is 14.6% higher than Optimism(76.8K swaps).
- In the last 90 days, the share of swap transactions from the total number of transactions has been higher on Optimism compared to Arbitrum on almost all days.
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Twitter: Zanyar Mohammady