Ethereum layer 2s, corresponding to Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon, elevated in reputation within the first quarter of 2023, in keeping with a report from Web3 growth platform Alchemy. Ethereum customers bridged over $635,000 value of crypto belongings to those networks from January to March, a rise of 44% over the fourth quarter of 2023 and 518% over the primary quarter of 2022.
The report, titled merely “Web3 Improvement Report,” cited Dune Analytics as its supply for this information. It confirmed that customers solely bridged roughly $103,000 value of belongings to layer 2s within the first quarter of 2022, whereas the identical three months in 2023 produced over $635,000 in bridging quantity.
Alchemy prompt that this elevated exercise might have been bolstered by profitable airdrops from Optimism and Arbitrum in Q1, 2023.
Along with elevated asset bridging from customers, layer 2s additionally confirmed higher exercise from builders. Though the deployment of sensible contracts associated to layer 2s decreased by 30% relative to This autumn 2022, it nonetheless elevated by 160% when in comparison with Q1, 2022, the report stated.
The crypto business is coming off the again of a steep downturn in buying and selling quantity and crypto costs throughout 2022, with scandals just like the UST depegging and FTX collapse inflicting many traders to draw back. However regardless of this adverse sentiment, customers nonetheless flocked to those new scalability options.
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The Ethereum ecosystem as a complete additionally confirmed elevated developer curiosity. Ethereum software program growth kits (SDKs) corresponding to Ethers.js, Web3.js, Hardhat and Web3.py have been downloaded 1.3 million instances in Q1 2022. This turned 1.9 million within the first quarter of 2023, an 8% enhance. As well as, downloads of the MetaMask SDK, a software used to develop apps that may work together with Ethereum pockets MetaMask, elevated in every month of the primary quarter.
Ethereum layer 2s have been supplied as an answer to Ethereum’s scalability drawback, which has been periodically inflicting excessive fuel charges since as early as 2020. Some specialists have argued that sharding the Ethereum community may also assist to chop down on fuel charges.