Overview

Rubicon is an order book application, which can be used to swap tokens, trade with limit orders, or earn a yield on your assets by providing liquidity in Rubicon Pools.

Rubicon Pools are the native liquidity pools of the Rubicon order books. It is a system of smart contracts that enables liquidity providers (LPs) to deposit assets in a pool to facilitate order book transactions and where yield from market-making goes to LPs.

Rubicon combines a simple and intuitive app with the awesome benefits of Optimism’s powerful layer 2 scaling solution to give you a next-generation trading experience [1].

The most important features are:

• Cheap Transactions: Users get >10x gas savings compared to L1, with future upgrades on the Optimism roadmap aimed at boosting these savings even more.
• Instant trade confirmations: Compared to the minutes-long waiting times for L1 transactions, you will be blown away at the blazing fast speeds of Optimistic Ethereum. Trades on Rubicon are confirmed within seconds.
• Earn in Rubicon Pools: You can passively earn in Rubicon’s liquidity pools. Deposited assets are used by strategists to actively provide liquidity and make markets on the Rubicon exchange. These liquidity pools are simply not possible on L1, but the reduced costs on L2 expand the possibilities for providing liquidity and ultimately make markets more efficient.
• Portfolio Management Tools: The Rubicon app has personalized tools for an unmatched trading experience. Use the Portfolio view to chart your returns and track your positions, and check out the History view for an easy way to see your past trades.
• Composability: Optimistic Ethereum is a cheap, fast, and EVM-compatible layer 2 ecosystem, with dozens of apps launching in the near future, and open contract deployment right around the corner.

Methodology

The intention of this dashboard is to take a look at the evolution of this platform since its inception, at around 1 year ago. As well, we will focus on the Liquidity activity due to 2 months ago, it announces the starting point og $OP rewards for liquidity providers.

Then, the main metrics to be analyzed are:

• Rubicon swaps and swappers over time: overall and by swap pair
• Volume swapped and netflow: overall and by swap pair
• Distribution of swaps, swappers and volume by swap pair
• Rubicon liquidity evolution since $OP rewards announcement
• Rubicon TVL evolution since rewards announcement
• Rubicon $OP rewards: overall and by token pool

Rubicon activity since inception: September 20th 2021

A year ago, Rubicon was launched on Optimism to provide the possibility to add liquidity to the platform from Optimism. With this announcement Rubicon users would be able to perform the same actions on the platform at a lower rates, due to the difference of Optimism fees against the L1 chains. In this section we are gonna analyze the evolution of the some activity metrics of the platform since the beginning on Optimism.

First of all, we can see how overall, the activity on Rubicon suddenly increased over the past two months.

On the one hand, the amount of monthly swaps had been increasing month by month since the inception, reaching more than 1k swaps in August month, surpassing an accumulate of 4k swaps. However, in September, the amount of swaps spiked to above 15k, and this number has been surpassed on this current month and the amount continues increasing.

Something similar has occured with the active users swapping on the platform. In this case, in September, the number spiked to above 10k unique users, and now, in October are reaching the 13k.

Finally, in terms of volume the same is succeeding. Before September, the highest amount was around 310k in August, but in September the volume swapped spiked to more than 700k being more than doubled. Now, with the current 20 days of October, more than 800k USD has been surpassed. In terms of netflow, it seems that the swaps in and out are so similar.

Looking at the swaps by swap pair, we can see how the most common swaps are WETH to USDC and USDC to WETH followed by DAI to WETH. If we take a look at the picture on the left, we can see how these three swap pairs are the most used by far for swappers and the have also the highest number of swaps.

If we take a look at the volume distribution, we can see how the WETH-USDC and USDC-WETH represents more than 50% of the swaps, reaching more than a million in volume swapped. They are followed by USDC-OP swap pair that represents more than 13% of the swaps. THe rest of the swaps represents lower than 10%, but DAI-WETH is above 9%.

Considering the distribution of swaps and swappers by swap pair, we can obserbe how the numbers are closer.

On the one hand, again, the WETH-USDC and USDC-WETH represents more than 50% of the swaps and more than 50% of the swappers. However, in this case we have in the third place the DAI-WETH and in the fourth the WETH-DAI. Then, we can corroborate that the most common trades in Rubicon are between stablecoins and WETH.

Rubicon liquidity activity since $OP rewards announcement on July 15th 2022

Two months ago, in July 15th 2022, Rubicon announced that liquidity providers would started to earn $OP rewards. It was a positive announcement for users and basically for liquidity providers. For this reason, in this section we are gonna analyze how liquidity activity evolved since this announcement.

Looking at the liquidity netflow evolution since the announcement, we can see how during the first days of July the repercussion seems to be null. However, the activity suddenly increased during the final days of July, reaching deposits higher to 2M USD. However, during August the activity decreased again but since September seems that it is increasing again but with values not higher than 1.5M.

Since the rewards announcement, we can see in the second image how the TVL increased by 5M, which is a good sign for the Rubicon platform.

Finally, the last metric analyzed are the $OP rewards provided by Rubicon. The first image shows the global rewards and the second image the rewards by pool token. We can see that in general the rewards started to increase since the announcement but since August it seems that the trend is negative and less rewards are being provided, mayeb because of the downgrade on the LP activity. Looking at the token pools, we can see that the most important is OP followed by USDC, USDC and DAI stablecoins and ETH has also an important percentage. WBTC and SNX are other available pools.

Key insights

• The amount of monthly swaps had been increasing month by month since the inception, reaching more than 1k swaps in August month, surpassing an accumulate of 4k swaps. But, in September, the amount of swaps spiked to above 15k. Something similar has occured with the active users swapping on the platform. In this case, in September, the number spiked to above 10k unique users, and now, in October are reaching the 13k.
• n terms of swapped volume, before September, the highest amount was around 310k in August, but in September the volume swapped spiked to more than 700k being more than doubled. Now, with the current 20 days of October, more than 800k USD has been surpassed. In terms of netflow, it seems that the swaps in and out are so similar.
• Looking at the swaps by swap pair, we can see how the most common swaps are WETH to USDC and USDC to WETH followed by DAI to WETH.
• The WETH-USDC and USDC-WETH represents more than 50% of the swaps, reaching more than a million in volume swapped. They are followed by USDC-OP swap pair that represents more than 13% of the swaps. The rest of the swaps represents lower than 10%.
• The WETH-USDC and USDC-WETH represents more than 50% of the swaps and more than 50% of the swappers. However, in this case we have in the third place the DAI-WETH and in the fourth the WETH-DAI. Then, we can corroborate that the most common trades in Rubicon are between stablecoins and WETH.
• During the first days of July the repercussion seems to be no too high. However, the activity started to increase during final days of July, reaching deposits higher to 2M USD. However, during August the activity decreased again but since September seems that it is increasing again but with values not higher than 1.5M.
• Since the $OP rewards announcement, the TVL has increased by 5M, which is a good sign for the Rubicon platform.
• In general the rewards started to increase since the announcement but since August it seems that the trend is negative and less rewards are being provided, mayeb because of the downgrade on the LP activity.
• Looking at the token pools, we can see that the most important is OP followed by USDC, USDC and DAI stablecoins and ETH has also an important percentage. WBTC and SNX are other available pools.

Aknowledgements:

• Big thank you to m0rt3za that helps me to inspire with this analysis!