Layer Two Ethereum Protocol Handled 250K Trades on September 6

Protocols using layer-two scaling approach for Ethereum have seen a spike in popularity in previous months as gas costs have risen again, and the L2 network currently processes larger trades than the Bitcoin network, as per new research.

On September 6, there were more trades on the Ethereum layer-two platform than on the Bitcoin blockchain, as per CoinGecko statistics compiled by industry researcher and Week In Ethereum News creator Evan Van Ness.

Layer-two protocols completed about 250,000 transactions during the day, compared to approximately 210,000 on BTC. According to the researcher, StarkWare handled the most transactions over the time, totaling around 143,000 across a variety of DeFi platforms, including the dYdX exchange and the L2 NFT platform Immutable X.

Arbitrum, which went live on mainnet on September 1st, had about 56,000 transactions. Arbitrum, which was just released, is one of its new products. One platform, which is investigating various layer two possibilities, is already drawing major names in DeFi, like Aave, Chainlink, and Uniswap.

According to the analyst, optimistic Ethereum had approximately 28,000 transactions during the day. In July, Uniswap launched its v3 protocol on Optimism; it also drives the Synthetix/Kwenta DeFi trading platform’s L2 version. Van Ness claimed that the remainder was made up of a few others, with decentralized exchange Loopring getting the lion’s share.

Bitcoiners noted that Van Ness compared ETH layer-twos to BTC layer-ones but offered no data on Bitcoin’s layer-two Lightning Network. Van Ness replied, “my opinion, given the minimal quantity locked, is that Lightning has minimum traction, but I’m glad to be proven wrong.”

“Sanket,” the strategy head at Ethereum layer-two technology data collector Polygon, dissected certain network data, showing that smaller trades dominated. On September 7, he tweeted, “45 percent of all addresses, throughout all of their trades that day, were less than $1.45.”

Loopring, as per L2fees, is by far the most cheap network for exchanging Ethereum, with a fee of just $0.40 while writing this article. Matter Labs’ zkSync was almost twice as expensive at $0.83, while Arbitrum One was $2.75 and Optimism was $5.83 to transfer ETH on their corresponding platforms.

Ethereum alone costs almost $11 for a basic ETH transfer, while Bitinfocharts revealed yesterday that the average gas cost for all trade types was approximately $40.