Distributed research for distributed networks — OurNetwork is crypto's go-to platform for onchain analytics.

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• At growthepie, we provide curated analytics on Layer 2s, aiming to track their overall traction (as Ethereum’s main scaling solution) and offer in-depth insights for app developers, Layer 2 teams, and end-users on specific chains or topics. Since their inception, L2s have shown consistent growth — this has culminated in 4.7M aggregate L2 users in the past week with 1.02M of them active across multiple chains.

• On Mar. 13, Ethereum launched a major Layer 2 upgrade: Blobs, a cost-effective data storage solution. This upgrade significantly reduces data availability costs for Layer 2s by over 98%, allowing them to lower transaction fees. Median transaction fees on Layer 2s now frequently fall below 1 cent.

• Base in particular has emerged as a big winner in the Layer 2 space. Since Mar. 13, Base DAUs tripled, transaction count went up by 500%, and even with the gas target increasing to 5 mgas/s, Base blocks are still getting filled and the EIP1559 fee market kicks in. The chain’s most active category: DeFi.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Even though Layer 2s are generally very cheap now, some actors still pay thousands in fees for a single transaction. In this sample transaction, they paid almost 1 ETH for a few swaps. The tx probably also would have been included with lower priority fees but the trade seems to have been worth it to set a very high gas price of 1,800 Gwei (standard on Base is <0.1 Gwei). Fun fact: this sender's address contributed to almost 10% of total Base revenue in last 7 days.

• OP, Base, and Mode are the biggest in terms of bridge deposits. All three are general-purpose chains, not app-specific chains, like Zora and Fraxtal. Assets bridged to the Superchain make up 25% of all TVL bridged from Ethereum L1.

• In April 2024, Base paid $1.86M in Superchain membership fees to OP. The Superchain bundles multiple L2s together, both technologically and economically. As part of the Superchain, Optimism provides developers access to a common rollup and governance framework (OP Stack & Governance), in exchange for a Superchain membership fee. Note that Base’s cost of revenue includes both the L1 settlement fee and Superchain membership fee.

• The MAUs on Base have reached 3.9M vs. 2.4M on OP Mainnet. Does it matter if a member chain overtakes the “Hub” of the Superchain in economic activity? We believe that OP Mainnet could still maintain its position as the Hub of the Superchain by providing a common governance framework for all member chains. In some sense, it’s even desirable that the member chains outperform OP Mainnet: the better they perform, the more they pay back fees to OP.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This transaction includes Base’s Superchain membership fee payment from Apr. 28. Base paid 112.06 ETH or $365k as a fee to the OP Collective. To date, Base has paid $5.2M in Superchain membership fees. For context, Base has paid $16.4M in L1 settlement fees since launch.

• Over the past six months, the number of active wallets and transactions has significantly increased. By May 2 2024, the number of wallets that transacted in the past 30 days reached 4.6M, marking an 85% rise since Jan. 2. Additionally, daily active wallets more than doubled in the same timeframe. Moreover, Arbitrum One achieved a new peak with 2.1M daily transactions on May 2, approximately 50% higher than the figures recorded on Jan. 1.

• As of Apr. 28, Arbitrum One had accumulated an ATH record of $5.2B worth of ETH. At 1.74M ETH, its balance is bigger than those of all the other EVM chains combined. Data on ETH inflows from CEXes also show Arbitrum One to be the leading L2 for ETH deposits, accounting for 75% of all ETH inflows into L2s as of May 2024.

• Following the Dencun updates, ArbOS phases 1 and 2 had kicked in, resulting in a 69% decrease in median transaction fees compared to pre-Dencun updates. Median transaction fees were reduced by more than 2x by the time ArbOS Phase 2 was integrated. Arbitrum One's transactions per second had also doubled after ArbOS was fully integrated.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: As part of Arbitrum's governance process, the DAO had voted for the AIP4844 to integrate ArbOS updates into the Arbitrum One. This had resulted in the very first transaction executed on Arbitrum One that had ArbOS updates in it. From then on, transaction fees on Arbitrum One fell drastically, giving way to growing usage.

• Mode Network is a L2 built on top of the OP stack with over $540M in TVL. Incentive mechanisms are central to Mode's growth as a DeFi hub in the Superchain. mBTC is an ERC20 BTC that is minted on Ethereum and bridged from Bitcoin via the Merlin Protocol. On Apr. 18, mBTC launched on Mode and included reward multipliers with partner protocols like Merlin and iZumi Finance. This resulted in $30M mBTC bridged to Mode in the first 24 hours and $250M+ since launch, about 45% of Mode’s TVL.

• The impact of mBTC launch on Mode is also visible in iZUMi Finance’s TVL. First, the protocol’s main DEX: iZiSwap ranks first by TVL on Mode’s DeFi protocols. Furthermore, when analysing iZUMi Finance’s TVL mix per chain, the high impact Mode has had on the protocol is clear — the chain represents ~87% of the iZumi’s TVL.

• Mode’s growth strategy of incentivised usage via Mode Points multipliers and partner protocol native points also had an impact on the growth of KIM Exchange — one of the main DEXs on Mode — which saw an increase in TVL of ~40% in the last 7 days, totaling $40M at the time of writing.

• zkSync Era, a ZK rollup with full EVM compatibility, is dominating the zk rollup landscape with more than 342k+ daily active addresses and 1.2M+ daily txns as of Apr. 30. As of May 1, zkSync boasted 67% more DEX volume, 191% more daily txns and 220% more daily active addresses than the average across ZK rollup players Scroll, Linea, Polygon zkEVM, and StarkNet. ZK aside, zkSync is currently the 3rd largest L2 by daily txns and daily active addresses (behind Arbitrum and Base).

• Over the past 90 day period, 338k+ addresses were active on zkSync Era on more than 20 distinct days. In the last 30 days, CARV (Gaming) and SyncSwap (DeFi) have driven the most tx volume, and have attracted 189k and 705k users, respectively.

• In May 2023, Pudgy Penguins introduced a toy collection inspired by their NFTs. Each Pudgy Toy comes with a QR code that grants the buyer access to the Pudgy World — an immersive online experience built on zkSync. This flow has driven more than 64k new wallets on zkSync.

• Developers are building on the Blast ecosystem, with a total of 205k contracts deployed since its inception. The data reveals that the Blast network has been actively fostering the development of dApps and innovative ideas from day one. The ecosystem has witnessed a consistent deployment of contracts, with an average of approximately 3.4k contracts deployed daily. This steady growth demonstrates the ongoing commitment of developers to deploying their ideas on Blast.

• Blast's stable "AVG gas_used/gas_limit ratio" between 0.6-0.7 shows consistent, efficient block utilization. Decreasing "AVG tx_fee/gas_used ratio" indicates optimization in transaction fees relative to gas usage, suggesting a focus on cost-effectiveness.

• The flow of ETH in and out of the network has weakened over time, with net outflows observed in the past 2 weeks. Currently, there are ~580k ETH on the network, with an Yield Forecast of ~23k ETH which is a significant amount.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Daily transactions on Blast have been on a downward trend, but with the launch of Fantasy Top and Blur on Blast, this trend has reversed sharply. Nearly 30M transactions have been completed, averaging 426,000 per day. In the past 24 hours, there have been 35k trades and 17.5k mints on Fantasy Top and 10k transactions on Blur. And it appears that gamblefi still accounts for a significant portion of Blast's transactions. For example, in the boom or doom mode on Yolo Games, there were 85k transactions in the past 24 hours.

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