In an Nov 1 report, the crypto market research firm noted that Arbitum now processes 62% as many transactions as Ethereum.
Weekly active users on the layer-2 have also grown significantly to reach a new all-time high of 282K – an increase of 125% since Oct 10. The previous all-time high was during the Arbitrum Odyssey event in June, with just over 200K users.
Arbitrum, developed by the New York-based Offchain Labs, is an optimistic roll-up build to scale up Ethereum smart contracts. The technology helps to bundle large batches of transactions from smart contracts and decentralized applications that are later moved to the Ethereum layer-1 mainnet.
Some well-known protocols that use Arbitrum include decentralized exchanges Uniswap, SushiSwap, and GMX, liquidity protocol Aave, and cross-chain bridge solution Stargate. According to DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) on Arbitrum is around $1 billion.
GMX and a potential airdrop to thank
Delphi Digital’s report notes that the success of platforms such as GMX has contributed to the increase in activity. Also, users might be attracted by the various yield opportunities offered by the protocols on Arbitrum.
The market research firm also suggests the surge might be due to speculators trying to boost on-chain activity in anticipation of an airdrop of the ARBI token, as hinted by Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder.
On Aug. 31, the Arbitrum network upgraded to Nitro, thus, reducing transaction costs, which were already 90-95% cheaper than Ethereum, and increasing the network’s capacity.
Offchain Labs recently announced that they had acquired Prysmatic Labs, one of the development teams behind the Ethereum Merge, in a bid to further strengthen Artirum’s capabilities.
