Optimism sees a decline in transaction count, thanks to Optimism Quests

• Since the conclusion of the Optimism Quests program, daily transaction on Optimism has declined. 
• This showed that many users flocked to the network only for the rewards promised by the program.

Following a significant surge in daily transactions on the layer 2 network, Optimism has seen a 70% decline in daily transaction count since the conclusion of its Optimism Quests program. 

Realistic or not, here’s OP’s market cap in BTC’s terms

In September 2022, Optimism released a series of 18 tasks called “Optimism Quests,” with a deadline set for 17 January 2023. These quests provided guidance for users to navigate through different features on the network, such as swapping, lending, staking, etc. The goal of the quests was to make the user experience in the ecosystem more seamless. 

Participation in the program allowed people to mint a commemorative NFT as a representation of their completion of the respective quests.

The highs…

Upon the launch of the program in September 2022, Optimism experienced an increase in user numbers as the daily transaction count on the network saw a significant spike.

Per data from Dune Analytics, daily transactions on the layer 2 network climbed steadily to register a high of 760,000 transactions on 12 January, a few days before the end of the program. This represented the highest count of daily transactions completed on the network since its launch two years ago.

Source: Dune Analytics

A pseudonymous Twitter user known as Dogetoshi discovered that during the Optimism Quests program, the daily transaction count on Optimism surpassed that of Arbitrum.

Optimism tx count down nearly 70% since quest ended. Now below Arbitrum again. pic.twitter.com/iI2pmS4QrY

— Steven (@Dogetoshi) January 22, 2023

Interestingly, although the Optimism Quests program led to an increase in the number of transactions on the network, data from Dune Analytics revealed that the number of new users onboarded onto the layer 2 network from other sources exceeded the count of users brought in by Quests. 

Out of the 953,000 new users on Optimism since the launch of Optimism Quests, only 39% of them were brought in by the program.

Source: Dune Analytics

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Then, the lows

While Optimism’s total value locked (TVL) rallied momentarily for a few weeks after the launch of Optimism Quests, it proceeded on a downward trend on 31 October 2022, data from DefiLlama showed. Since then, it has fallen by 37%. At press time, Optimism’s TVL was $635.68 million. 

Source: DefiLlama

Since Quests ended on 17 January, daily transactions on the optimistic roll-up platform have plummeted. In fact, since the high recorded on 12 January, the transaction count on the network has dropped by over 65%.

Source: Optimism Etherscan