The high interest in Arbitrum dApps contributed immensely to the surge in transactions on the network.
According to Messari’s data, Arbitrum averaged 160,000 daily active addresses in 2023 alone. The protocol managed to have almost double the number of transactions when compared to the Optimism network.The discrepancy in activity was high despite both protocols providing the same utility to users. In terms of transaction fees both Optimism and Arbitrum charged similar fees. The difference in savings made on each protocol by users was also not too large in comparison.
When Optimism Quests NFT was announced, to incentivize new users to the protocol, the activity on the network surged. However, as the Quest initiative came to an end, the activity on the network took a hit as well. The overall interest across Optimism NFTs fell significantly in the past few months as evidenced by Dune Analytics’ data.Coming to the DeFi sector, both protocols showcased positive developments in terms of DEX volumes in the last few weeks. However, the TVL on both networks did not have the same level of congruency.Source: ArtemisEven though Arbitrum has been dominating the L2 sector, it is important to note that a lot of the activity on the network was due to the launch of the ARB token.
Over time, as the interest in the token fades away and new competitors such as zkSync Era and StarkNet start to gain traction, Arbitrum’s dominance could be threatened.