This analysis was made for the numbaNERD program.
I used DUNE, Arkham and Flipside for this analysis. All metrics except one of them come from the queries that I wrote myself.
You can find links for the embedded version of the graphs just below them.
I have excluded transactions associated with the contract address ‘0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000015’ from this analysis. This contract is internal and is used for configuring L1 block values.
In the second part of my bi-weekly analysis, I have implemented some refinements to enhance the clarity and relevance of our metrics. Instead of presenting daily data, we have transitioned to a bi-weekly format to facilitate more meaningful comparisons.
To achieve this, I have partitioned each month into two distinct segments based on the ‘DAY’ component of the TIMESTAMP data. Specifically, if the ‘DAY’ value of the TIMESTAMP falls below 16, it is considered the first part of that month.
Below, we have the transaction data, and during the current period (second half of August), OP Mainnet has recorded 6.5 million transactions. This represents a decrease of 28.16% when compared to the preceding term.
Now here is an other simple graph which is based on a simple query, but I find it surprising at least for my self.
In the graph provided, the orange bars represent l1FeesPaid, while the blue bars represent l2Gas. These metrics can be interpreted as execution fees paid to Optimism’s sequencer, which serves as a rational indicator of Optimism’s revenue.
Notably, there is a significant spike in the ratio of l2Gas to l1FeesPaid, and this coincides with the date of the Bedrock upgrade on June 6, 2023, at 16:00. The Bedrock upgrade was intended to enhance the cost-effectiveness of Optimism for users by optimizing transaction batches. However, the magnitude of this increase have come as a surprise to me (maybe I did something wrong ).
I have checked the Roll-up economics dashboard by 0xKofi, and I couldn’t discern any significant changes.
I also examined Kofi’s query; however, Kofi’s query is based on a special table, not a raw data table, so I couldn’t proceed further from there. I conducted some checks on Optimistic Etherscan as well but did not find any errors related to my graph or query. I remain skeptical about the situation, even with my simplified query.
SELECT
CASE
WHEN DAY(ot.block_time) < 16 THEN CONCAT(CAST(MONTH(ot.block_time) AS VARCHAR),'First Half of ', mn.nameOfMonth)
ELSE CONCAT(CAST(MONTH(ot.block_time) AS VARCHAR), 'Last Half of ', mn.nameOfMonth)
END AS "Time Frame"
, COUNT(DISTINCT(hash)) AS numberOfTransactions
, SUM( (gas_price * gas_used)/POW(10,18)) AS l2GaseInETH
, SUM( (l1_fee)/POW(10,18)) AS l1FeeInETH
FROM optimism.transactions ot
LEFT JOIN month_names mn ON MONTH(ot.block_time) = mn.numberOfMonth
WHERE ot.block_time > CAST('2023–01–01 00:00' AS TIMESTAMP)
AND ot.block_time < CAST('2023–09–01 00:00' AS TIMESTAMP)
AND ot.to != 0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000015
GROUP BY 1
If this insight holds true, it implies that Bedrock is an even more bullish than I initially thinked. Nevertheless, let’s not dwell on this point and continue with our analysis.
Now, we will examine the number of new users, categorized by L1 account age at the time of their first Optimism transaction, using the same format as the graphs presented above.
In the last part of August, a total of 259,626 new addresses were deployed on Optimism. Our graph categorizes these addresses based on their L1 account ages at the time of their first transaction on Optimism. Of these new addresses:
- 184,814 addresses had not been deployed on L1.
- 74,812 addresses were younger than 1 month.
It’s worth noting that these younger addresses likely belong to users who transferred their funds from centralized exchanges (CEXs) to L1 and subsequently deposited them into Optimism. This trend can be seen as a positive sign for Optimism, as it indicates that people are leveraging Ethereum’s security while mitigating the high gas fees associated with L1 transactions. (They are moving onchain with out high fees through OP Mainnet)This observation opens up opportunities for further analysis, particularly in conducting cross-chain assessments to understand the source of the initial funds for these addresses. Are they originating from other Optimism accounts? Exploring this aspect could provide a clearer view of the overall ecosystem.
Now we will investigate these new addresses activity for trying figure out ‘Why they are on Optimism?’
For this purpose we will take these new deployed addresses’s first transactions and group them by project.
Merkly and Holograph taking my focus. Merkley is an NFT bridge and Holograph is a digital asset composability protocol that enables asset issuers to mint Holographic assets, which are fungible and non-fungible tokens that exist natively on multiple blockchains.
It is again seeing NFT related projects taking new users to Optimism surprising for me maybe I am so out of NFT ecosystem.
Continuing from where we left off, as previously mentioned, during the last half of August, there were a total of 6.5 million transactions on the OP Mainnet.
Out of these transactions, approximately half, or 3.268 million, were routed through 54 different contracts. To gauge the popularity of these applications, I created a pie chart. This chart will provide a visual representation of the distribution of transactions categorized by these contracts.
It’s noteworthy that we’ve observed two new names on our list of popular contracts, namely “holographer” and “Multicall3.” Both of these contracts appear to be linked to cross-chain activities, which is indeed a bullish sign in my opinion. This suggests that as the SuperChain umbrella continues to expand, we can anticipate a growing number of transactions being routed through contracts of this nature. It will be intriguing to monitor how these cross-chain activities and associated contracts evolve in the coming days.
GOVERNACE
Continuing our analysis on the governance side, slight increase in the votableSupply, which represents the delegated OP amount. Investigating the unlocks of OP tokens and understanding how investors and core contributors utilize their OPs can provide valuable insights.
However, it appears that there is a shortage of comprehensive resources on this topic. Transparency in this process is crucial for the community’s understanding of governance activities and can enhance trust within the ecosystem. It might be beneficial to advocate for increased transparency in OP unlocks and governance-related actions to provide stakeholders with a clearer view of how these decisions are being made and executed. This can contribute to a more informed and engaged community.
It’s worth noting that there’s a new delegate on the top delegates list, “wintermutegovernance.eth.” I’ve also executed another query to identify the delegates who have delegated their voting power to Wintermute. It appears that the address “0xD96e8f4DfF58733c0121b2E6D0B0FF0361c761cE” has delegated its voting power to Wintermute. Remarkably, this address is currently holding over 1.3 million OP tokens.
It does seem that the address “0xD96e8f4DfF58733c0121b2E6D0B0FF0361c761cE” belongs to Wintermute itself, although the exact source of these tokens remains unclear. Further investigation may be necessary to determine how they acquired these tokens.
Regarding Quix’s voting power, it’s essential to address any outstanding votable supply held by Quix, especially considering that Quix has been inactive for several months. I am sharing the addresses of those still holding votable supply on Quix. If you know one of these address owners try to let them know about the case.
We might need a massaging system for this kind of cases 
DeFi
Now we will see TVL and erc20 volume for having some idea about DeFi ecosystem on OP mainnet.
TVL decrased 33M USD on OP Mainnet during the last half of August, on the graph below we are seeing daily change.
https://dune.com/embeds/2945345/4883786
There is nothing out of expectations, you may compare it with first half of August by visiting this post.
Now we are opening NFT case, I am so curious about it. Lets dive in and check NFT related numbers.
NFT
According to my analysis NFT deployement platforms working like worker ants. 810K+ NFT has been minted.
Holograph is leading this race, then Galxe, Niftykit and Omnix are coming, as a reminder I used DUNE’s contract mapping and based on project name not based on contract name, so some of these labels including more then one contract. And erc-1155 format NFTs included our analysis you may visit the link and see embeded version of the graph.
And here is the pulse of NFT mints on Optimism.
Now we know that, NFT mint side is realy active on OP Mainnet, consider this 6.5M total number of transactions and 812K NFT mints, more then %10 of all transactions was NFT minting.
Now lets check NFT economy, I did not want to use nft.trades table instead because there could be some new NFT marketplaces that doesnt included that table yet. However when I tried join erc20 and erc721 transfers table on their hashes it is showing LP NFT’s as trade, so I used nft.trades table and unfortunely we dont have almost anything to talk about NFT trades.
It looks like people are minting NFTs for fun or as badges. That was all for this analysis I hope you enjoy it. I will continue this analysis in the governance forum but instead of bi-weekly I will make it monthly.
…
the fact that there has been attention brought to the fact that Quix received many delegations early on in the process of Optimism’s ecosystem formation.
