The growth of Ethereum layer-2 networks is expected to continue in 2023
The Ethereum layer-2 networks have been experiencing explosive growth over the past few months, and this trend is set to continue in the following years. Recently, layer-2 networks experienced an increase in daily active users, which translated into higher fees for their ecosystems.
The analytics provider Token Terminal reports Polygon led the pack with 313,457 daily active users on Jan. 17. Additionally, the number of daily active users spiked to over 600,000 earlier in January. There has been a 30% increase in activity since October 2022, resulting in nearly $55,000 worth of daily fees for Polygon. Optimism has grown even faster, with a 190% increase in daily active users in the last three months.
This resulted in daily network fees of $119,475, an increase of nearly 140% since the start of the year. Arbitron One now has 41,694 daily active users, a 40% increase in the last three months. According to the data, the network’s daily fees are just over $40,000 per day.
Meanwhile, according to data from the L2 ecosystem analytics platform L2beat, Arbitrum has a 52% market share in terms of total value locked, which is currently $2.55 billion. Over the last week, the Total value locked has increased by 9%.
The second largest L2 network, Optimism, has a total value locked of $1.46 billion, giving it a 30% market share. Over the last seven days, its collateral lock has increased by 15%. Together, they account for over 80% of all collateral locked in layer-2 platforms. Over the last week, TVL for all L2s increased by nearly 10%, bringing it to $4.89 billion. However, the total figure is still 34% lower than its peak in April 2022.
Nonetheless, this drop is less than half of Defi TVL’s drop since its all-time high. According to DeFiLlama, Defi collateral has dropped by 75% since December 2021, indicating that there is currently more demand and momentum for layer-2 networks.
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