Ethereum beaten in Daily Transfer Count by Arbitrum and Optimism combined 

• L2 scaling network Arbitrum’s and Optimism’s combined daily transactions beat Ethereum’s daily transactions. 
• Ethereum manages 1.10 million while they manage 1.32 million combined.
• Since the Merge, there has been a considerable increase. 

Transaction volume plays a very important role, especially in the crypto industry; 2022 saw a drought in this aspect. Post-Ethereum merge, on-chain fees are lowered, and the combined transaction volume on Layer 2 (L2) chains, such as Arbitrum and Optimism, surpassed Ethereum’s on-chain transaction output. 

January 14, 2023, Ethereum processed 1.10 million on-chain transactions; at the same time, Arbitrum and Optimism managed to get 1.32 million. 

The on-chain transaction fees have been at the lower end of the spectrum since August 2022 and dropped further after the major shift towards Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus on September 15, 2022. 

The data from etherscan.io’s gas tracker shows the highest priority on-chain ether transaction cost only about $0.75 or just 23 gwei at 5:00 PM EST on Sunday. 

As per data obtained on January 15, 2023, it cost around $0.101 per transfer for the average Arbitrum transaction and $0.1410 for the Optimism transaction. L2 scaling solutions with features they provide are increasingly gaining popularity from 2020, joining the bandwagon with Arbitrum and Optimism; the list includes Polygon Hermez, Zksync, Boba and Starknet.

L2 allows faster and cheaper transactions by considerably reducing the computational workload on L1, or the main blockchain network, Ethereum. Transactions of Arbitrum and Optimism are “rolled up” periodically, to be recorded on Ethereum using an optimistic virtual machine or optimistic rollup. Further analysis of data shows that there has been a significant increase in Arbitrum and Optimism.

Optimism recorded 737,191 transactions, and Arbitrum did 56,745 on January 14, 2023. Looking at the data from January 10, 2023, the combined transactions from Arbitrum and Optimism managed to beat the number of direct Ethereum on-chain transfers. 

On January 10, 2023, Ethereum processed 1.06 million on-chain transfers, while the combined transactions of both L2 scaling networks managed 1.12 million. 

As per the data from Dune Analytics from January 14, 2023, both L2 networks managed 1.32 million transactions, but Ethereum only managed 1.10 million. Although when compared with other Ethereum, it still processes more daily transactions. XRP and Polygon managed to settle more transactions than Ethereum. 

Polygon managed 3.10 million, while XRP did 1.25 million transactions settled on January 14, 2023. Even if these L2 chains could not surpass Ethereum alone, Polygon’s and XRP’s daily transactions count have increased considerably for the past 12 months. 

On January 15, 2022, Ethereum managed 1.17 million transactions, Arbitrum processed 21,734 transfers, and Optimism managed 30,430 per day. In the last 12 months, Arbitrum saw a 2,599% increase and Optimism’s 2,322% increase in daily transactions. 

Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.

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