Arbitrum vs Optimism - May 2023

The battle for Layer 2 supremacy between Arbitrum and Optimism rages on.

Let’s look at the key statistics to see who is winning the war.

Total Value Locked (TVL)

Arbitrum and Optimism are the two premier rollups on Ethereum. Rollups inherit the security of Ethereum and offer faster and cheaper transactions than mainnet. Arbitrum TVL is ~2.5x that of Optimism.

Transaction Fees

Layer 2 solutions (like rollups) offer significantly cheaper transaction costs compared to mainnet. Sending ETH on Arbitrum is half of the cost of Optimism where a token swap is roughly the same cost.

Daily Transactions

For most of 2023, Arbitrum usage has eclipsed Optimism except for a brief stretch during Winter. Since March, Arbitrum has consistently posted more transactions than mainnet as well.

Daily Active Users

Chain users remained relatively the same up until early 2023. Today, active users on Arbitrum are nearly 3x of those on Optimism.

Revenue

Chain revenue was similar until March 23: $ARB airdrop day. Arbitrum pulled away that day and has maintained their commanding lead ever since.

Arbitrum Nova

We won’t explore Arbitrum Nova in this thread, but I would be remiss to omit the Reddit integration. This paves the way for easy onboarding to Web3 for a multitude of users.

Reddit Users:

Daily: ~55M

Monthly: ~860M

Danksharding

Danksharding (AKA EIP-4844) will help to further reduce transaction fees on rollups. Big Picture: this is bullish for ANY Layer 2 solution built on $ETH.

Readiness Checklist:

Conclusion

Arbitrum overshadows Optimism in virtually every metric. The more competition there is between L2 solutions, the better it is for the ecosystem and users.