Arbitrum, an Ethereum rollup with assets worth $5.77 billion bridged to it, continued to see increased growth last quarter.
The activity comes after a highly anticipated airdrop in March this year.
The layer-2 blockchain witnessed strong activity based on the “consistently higher” transaction count and “influx of new participants,” according to a Nansen report shared with Decrypt.
Notably, the blockchain has supported more activity since the airdrop in March.
Industry Still Isn’t Close to Solving the Blockchain Trilemma: Offchain Labs Chief Strategy Officer
Since the arrival of CryptoKitties in 2017 and DeFi Summer in 2020, the industry is still grappling with how to make blockchains better, cheaper, and faster. And this is precisely where Offchain Labs’ chief strategy officer A.J. Warner and his team are setting up camp: solving the famed blockchain trilemma. The blockchain trilemma refers to the three core challenges developers face when building a blockchain: scalability, security, and decentralization. Gains made in one of these areas are conce...
The number of new wallets transacting for the first time on the network has surged since the start of the year.
Nansen analysts noted that it “points towards more organic activity” as new users have been increasing, even “surpassing Ethereum on certain days in Q2.”
In contrast, Optimism, which conducted its airdrop on May 31, 2022, didn’t see the same rise in activity following its airdrop.
Like Arbitrum, the Optimism network is a popular layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. After releasing its OP Stack, a variety of builders have spun up their very own networks including the Coinbase-incubated Base network.
The continued influx of new participants also points to “the resilience and thriving ecosystem that Arbitrum has built,” said Nansen analysts
Arbitrum to Retry Vote Citing ‘Chicken and the Egg’ Problem as ARB Falls
Arbitrum’s newly-launched ARB token sank over the weekend as the network navigated a governance crisis stemming from the apparent failure of its DAO’s first vote. At first, Arbitrum signaled the vote was essentially meaningless, and then changed course on Sunday amid mounting pressure. The leadership behind the Ethereum scaling solution had announced earlier this month that it was forming a decentralized autonomous organization or DAO, which coincided with the launch of a governance token named...
The launch of Arbitrum Orbit, a permissionless framework for deploying Orbit Chains, or so-called layer-3 chains, atop Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova, also appears to have helped boost user activity.
Unpacking Arbitrum Orbit
Launched on June 21, Arbitrum Orbit lets users create their own Arbitrum-based rollup.
Orbit is similar to Optimism’s OP Stack in enabling the creation of new blockchains with its own privacy, permissions, fee token, and governance specifications.
“These solutions collectively aim to offer faster, more cost-effective, and secure transactions, fostering innovation and supporting Ethereum’s growth as a sustainable and scalable blockchain,” said the analysts.
Arbitrum's New 'Layer-3' Xai Network Is Built to Power Web3 Games
Ethereum layer-2 scaling networks like Arbitrum and Immutable X are battling it out to provide a home for the next wave of Web3 games—but later this year, a so-called “layer-3” network will enter the arena with a specific goal of catering to game creators. Revealed today, Xai is billed as a layer-3 scaling network built via Arbitrum’s existing layer-2 network architecture, which itself sits atop the Ethereum mainnet. It’s being created via the permissionless Arbitrum Orbit tech stack that lets...
The main difference between the two designs is that Optimism chains are “geared towards the layer-2 market,” whereas Arbitrum’s design is more application-specific.
Nansen analysts added, “By having less congestion on the base layer, removing app-specific transactions to an L3. Arbitrum Orbit might be able to further aggregate transactions and optimize computation, significantly increasing the transaction throughput.”
