Bridging Stats - $ETH

• We have seen 200K $ETH bridging transactions with a total of 800M worth of $ETH bridged over to Optimism.
• Sep 2021 saw the highest number of users bridging, with 51.6K unique users in Sep 2021.
• Sep 2021 saw the highest number of bridged transactions, with 54K transactions in Sep 2021.
• However, Aug 2022, was really when the most amount of ETH was bridged over with a total of 117K $ETH or 193M $USD worth of ETH.
• The cumulative stats show that till date 312K ETH has been bridged by 197K transactions for a total volume of 687M $USD.

What is Optimism

Optimism is a fast, stable, and scalable L2 blockchain built by Ethereum developers, for Ethereum developers. Built as a minimal extension to existing Ethereum software, Optimism’s EVM-equivalent architecture scales your Ethereum apps without surprises. If it works on Ethereum, it works on Optimism at a fraction of the cost.[1]

What is a Bridge?

A blockchain bridge, otherwise known as a cross-chain bridge, connects two blockchains and allows users to send cryptocurrency from one chain to the other. Basically, if you have bitcoin but want to spend it like Ethereum, you can do that through the bridge.

One of the biggest problems of blockchain was the inability to work together. While fluid and somewhat efficient as single entities, each blockchain is limited by the walls of its own domain. Most often this can lead to high transaction costs and congestion. 

Blockchain bridges solve this problem by enabling token transfers, smart contracts and data exchange, and other feedback and instructions between two independent platforms. [2]

Optimism Bridging

Bridging assets between layers

• Optimism is designed so that users can send arbitrary messages between smart contracts on Optimism and Ethereum. This makes it possible to transfer assets, including ERC20 tokens, between the two networks. The exact mechanism by which this communication occurs differs depending on the direction in which messages are being sent.

• Optimism uses this functionality in the Standard bridge to allow users to deposit assets (ERC20s and ETH) from Ethereum to Optimism and also allow withdrawals of the same from Optimism back to Ethereum. See the developer documentation and examples on details on the inner workings of the Standard bridge.

Moving from Ethereum to Optimism

To send messages from Ethereum to Optimism, users simply need to trigger the CanonicalTransactionChain contract on Ethereum to create a new block on Optimism block. See the above section on block production for additional context. User-created blocks can include transactions that will appear to originate from the address that generated the block.[3]

Bridging Stats - $Non-ETH Tokens

• USDC is the dominant token and we have seen 12K $USDC bridging transactions with a total of 800M worth of $UDDC bridged over to Optimism.

• Aug 2022 saw the highest number of users bridging, with 2K unique users.

• Aug 2022 saw the highest number of bridged transactions, with 3K transactions.

• Aug 2022, was also when the most amount of Non-ETH tokens was bridged over with a total of 413M $USD with USDC accounting for 277M $USD.

Most popular destinations

• Hop Protocol is by far the most popular destination after bridging to Optimism from Ethereum.
  • This is the case for both overall and the past month.
  • Over all Hop Protocol saw 6K transactions 400 out of which came in the past month
• Uniswap is by the second most popular destination after bridging to Optimism from Ethereum overall and the past month.
• June 2022 has been the most popular month overall, whereas Oct 23, 2022 has been the most popular day in the past 30 days.
• The most common event after bridging is transfer with 2.5M transactions overall, followed by swap with 1.4M transactions.

Conclusion

• The Transaction Frequency for bridging has significantly reduced, however the volume has spiked significantly in the past few months.

• $ETH and $USDC are the dominating the Ethereum → Optimism bridge.

• Hop Protocol seems to be most popular destination overall and for the past month both.

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Methodology

• The Credit for the Base queries goes to the following queries [1] , [2]
• The Base query in some cases is modified for the required data.
• The overall analysis focuses First on the Bridging stats, namely number of transactions, amount bridged and the number of users for both ETH and Non-ETH tokens.
• Then it dives deep into the next actions that each wallet takes after bridging.
• Also looks in the next protocol that each wallet uses after bridging to Optimism.