On-chain data shows the rapid growth in user activity of the largest L2 protocols on Ethereum over the past three months. Their total TVL already exceeds 3.2 million ETH.
Analysts at Token Terminal record a large increase in the number of daily users and the volume of commissions in the largest Layer 2 networks of the Ethereum ecosystem:
- Polygon;
- Arbitrum;
- Optimism.
Polygon leads the way, with over 313,000 daily users, up 30% since October 2022. And at peak times, in early January, daily users exceeded 600,000. As a result, Polygon generates about $55,000 per day as a commission.
The L2 protocol Optimism shows even more active growth. For the last three months, the number of users grew by 190%. The total volume of commissions is almost $120,000 daily. More than 41,000 people use the Arbitrum network daily, and the growth for the three months exceeded 40%. The daily network fees are around $40,000.
Meanwhile, data from the L2beat platform reveals that Arbitrum occupies 52% of the Ethereum L2 protocol market by total value locked (TVL), which is approximately $2.55 billion. Arbitrum’s TVL went up by 9% over the last week. The second largest network in TVL is Optimism — its TVL is $1.46 billion, and it accounts for 30% of the entire market. Over the past seven days, the volume of locked funds in the network has grown by 15%.
TVL of L2 networks in the Ethereum ecosystem increased by 7% over the last week and reached $4.89 billion. However, this is still over a third less compared to the peak values of April last year. According to DeFiLlama, the overall TVL decline of DeFi projects decreased by more than 70% since April 2022. This indicates a significant growth momentum specifically in the L2 protocol segment of the Ethereum network.
This can be attributed to Ethereum’s successful transition to Proof-of-Stake and plans for the upcoming Shanghai update, scheduled for March 2023, which will allow access to staked ETH.
