Introduction

Look at this beautiful town in the picture next to this text box. This is Optimism town (aka, Ecosystem) with Towers, Houses, Farms, Mountains, and so many other structures.

Now, take a closer look. This town is somehow isolated from outside world by a river. But if it was absolutely isolated, then no town as glorious as this could be built. There are Bridges! These bridges provide the structural basics for building a town full of life.

It is through these bridges that merchants, capitalists, builders, teachers, etc, come to the town and bring wealth, knowledge and power with themselves.

Today, we are going to see what is going on on those bridges. how many people are crossing and how much capital they are bringing with themselves?

Are you curious to know more?

What exactly are you going to see in this analysis?

• Total ==ETH== Volume, Number of Bridgooors and number of bridge transactions from Mainnet to Optimism & Optimism to Mainnet.

• Total ==ETH== Daily & Cumulative Volume, Number of Bridgooors and number of bridge transactions from Mainnet to Optimism & Optimism to Mainnet.

• Total ==Stablecoin== Volume, Number of Bridgooors and number of bridge transactions from Mainnet to Optimism & Optimism to Mainnet.

• Total ==Stablecoin== Daily & Cumulative Volume, Number of Bridgooors and number of bridge transactions from Mainnet to Optimism & Optimism to Mainnet.

• ETH Price impact on ETH & Stablecoins bridge volume
• Top ETH & Stablecoin Bridgooors by amount of bridged capital from Mainnet to Optimism & Optimism to Mainnet.

Methodological Notes

• I am using FlipsideCrypto Database and application to render this analysis at Sep 15th, 2022.

• There are various Bridges that let you enter the Optimism town, but in this analysis we are going to take a look at Optimism Native bridge (See here for more info on Hop optimism bridge)

• All Provided information is for the past 4 month to get a better sense of changes over time and include major events that might have impact on bridge stats.

• We Are comparing ETH and three stablecoins (USDC, USDT, DAI) on 3 main criterion of Bridged Volume, Number of Distinct Bridgoors and Number of Bridge transactions.

• ETH, USDC, and USDT bridge from Mainnet to Optimism is a transfer to this contract:

  ==0x99c9fc46f92e8a1c0dec1b1747d010903e884be1==

• DAI bridge from Mainnet to Optimism is a transfer to this contract:

  ==0x10e6593cdda8c58a1d0f14c5164b376352a55f2f==

• ETH, USDC, and USDT bridge from Optimism to mainnet is a transfer to this contract:

  ==0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000010==

• DAI bridge from Optimism to mainnet is a transfer to this contract:

  ==0x467194771dae2967aef3ecbedd3bf9a310c76c65==

Data & Analysis

We’ll start our analysis with the most basic data.

Looking at numbers below we can see that ETH bridge transactions in past 4 month are almost 3X more than Stablecoin bridge transactions. This is ~ 4X when it comes to unique bridgooors.

though, Stablecoins are not alike at all. USDC is the most favorite asset in all aspects. DAI and USDT are having a much more close competition.

Moving on from total stats to daily scale, we can see more valuable information.

• There are two major peaks in ETH bridged Volume:

  1. Jun 1st which was the OP token launch leading to users bridging ETH to claim and trade.
  2. August 4th which indicates Aave announcement of OP incentives which led to huge capital movement inside Optimism (See here for more Info)

• Daily ETH Bridge and bridgooors count suggests that OP claim event engaged more people with less capital, while Aave incentive event did the opposite.

• There doesn’t seem to be any significant correlation between ETH price and volume of ETH bridged.

Bridging Back To Mainnet

Ideally it’s better to have quiet road here. every town wants to have the capital staying and helping its economy and people to populate its streets.

Optimism native bridge has a week long delay in finalizing the bridge back transaction. This leads to preferring other third party bridges and a lag or irrelevance in reaction (meaning that peaks and lows might not respond to specific events).

• Overall, all bridge stats from Optimism to Mainnet are lower than Mainnet to Optimism which is a good sign.
• ETH is a by far the most popular asset to bridge back and forth between Mainnet and Optimism.
• In Daily ETH Volume you can see that there are ~1 week lag comparing to Bridging from Mainnet to Optimism

In the end you can see who are the top addresses/bridgooors for ETH and Stablecoins.

• It is interesting that almost all top stablecoin bridgooors are using USDC and no one uses USDT.
• Only one user used two assets at high volume (USDC + DAI) and others are sticking to 1 asset.

Things are a bit different when it comes to Stablecoins stats.

• Bars are more alive and fluctuating starting from late July where the whole ecosystem started to hype as we know.
• It’s not only whales bringing capital in form of ETH. In stablecoin bridges there is more harmony between counts and volume which is interesting.
• There is also more correlation between stablecoin bridge volume and ETH price.

Takeaways

• ETH bridge transactions in past 4 month are almost 3X more than Stablecoin bridge transactions & Unique ETH bridgooors are 4X more.
• USDC is the most favorite asset in all aspects, while DAI and USDT are having a much more close competition.
• There doesn’t seem to be any significant correlation between ETH price and volume of ETH bridged; But the correlation is more significant when it comes to stablecoin bridging.
• All bridge stats from Optimism to Mainnet are lower than Mainnet to Optimism.
• ETH is a by far the most popular asset to bridge back and forth between Mainnet and Optimism.
• Almost all top stablecoin bridgooors are using USDC and no one uses USDT.