L2 On-chain Data Comparison: Who are the Beneficiaries of Ecological Activity?

Author: SPENCER NOON

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Polygon zkEVM

Polygon's CDK stack: usage has grown approximately 2 times in the past 30 days.

Polygon zkEVM is built on the Chain Development Kit (CDK), an open-source, modular set of components for launching custom blockchains within the Polygon and Ethereum ecosystems. Polygon zkEVM (built on CDK) continues to grow in active wallets, transactions, and TVL. Compared to the previous 30 days, the 7-day moving averages for active wallets and transactions increased by 105% and 83%, respectively. Its TVL grew by 14% during a similar period. As of November 8, Polygon's zkEVM has 15,500 active wallets and 56,800 transactions daily.

Within 24 hours of launching withdrawals on Polygon zkEVM, 14,000 wallets completed 39,000 withdrawals of at least 101 different tokens. Since July 20, the number of withdrawals completed within 24 hours has significantly increased, making Polygon zkEVM one of the fastest native cross-chain bridges.

Chains utilizing the CDK stack include Astar, Canto, Near, and Palm. Overall, these chains (including Polygon zkEVM) have accumulated nearly 11 million active wallets and 452 million transactions since 2022. They bring approximately $162 million in TVL to the CDK ecosystem.

Tx-Level Alpha: 35 minutes. This is the time it took for this wallet to withdraw 105.77 ETH (worth $224,000) from Polygon zkEVM to Ethereum via the native cross-chain bridge. Polygon's CDK capabilities allow withdrawals to be completed almost instantly, making Polygon zkEVM one of the fastest native cross-chain bridges for sending funds from L2 to Ethereum.

Scroll

Scroll's mainnet has accumulated over $36 million in TVL, more than 3 million transactions, and 1 million addresses in 3 weeks.

Scroll is a community-first native zkEVM based on Ethereum, designed to scale without sacrificing security, developer, or user experience. Scroll officially announced its mainnet launch on October 17, 2023, and has since seen rapid growth. The total locked value in bridges has exceeded $36 million, with about half allocated to DeFi protocols (this may increase as more projects are indexed). Both transactions and unique addresses show a clear upward trend, exceeding 3 million and 1 million, respectively.

Since the genesis block, average daily Gas fees have decreased by 84%. For the initial phase of zkEVM, transaction costs have actually shown a significant decline (and stabilized) as the number of users and transactions increases; this is due to fixed proof costs being amortized over a larger group of users.

To celebrate the mainnet, Scroll announced Scroll Origins NFTs on October 26 for early smart contract deployers after the genesis block. This initiative has successfully increased deployment on Scroll, with the average number of verified contracts rising by 92% daily since the announcement (around 1,000 contracts daily in recent days).

Tx-Level Alpha: This is the creation transaction of the L2ScrollMessenger contract, which sharp-eyed users noticed had a 46 ETH balance, causing some confusion. The way this uniquely designed contract works is that it has a preset ETH balance from the genesis block, meaning that when ETH is deposited on Ethereum, an equal amount is spent from that contract on Scroll, similar to "minting ETH." This is a more optimized approach, making deposits both more cost-effective and technically simpler.

Base

Base holds a 40% market share of contract deployments, accounting for over 80% of total ETH deployments.

Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 network developed by Coinbase, built on Optimism—by TVL, Optimism is the second-largest L2 ecosystem, second only to Arbitrum. The Layer 2 sequencer bundles users' transactions and submits them to Ethereum, acting like an air traffic controller. The sequencer for Base may have generated $7 million in revenue for Coinbase in Q3, primarily due to the use of the social finance platform Friend.tech. By the end of Q3, sequencer revenue had dropped 74% from its peak in August, now generating about $200,000 to $300,000 weekly.

Since its inception, Friend.tech has accounted for about 10-13% of the total fees users pay to the sequencer through transactions, peaking at over 20 ETH. Since September, the app's revenue has declined, consistent with the overall fees for the sequencer, indicating a slowdown in activity across the broader ecosystem.

Despite the decline in sequencer revenue, the number of contracts deployed on Base has surpassed all other major L2s since its launch in June 2023, averaging a 40% lead in weekly contract deployments over the leading L2. The number of contracts currently deployed on Base accounts for 80-180% of the contracts deployed on Ethereum L1, indicating a relatively strong developer activity ecosystem.

Tx-Level Alpha: This is the first transaction into a Maple Finance pool of $500,000 USDC. This occurred simultaneously with Maple's announcement that they would launch on-chain capital markets on Base on November 1. This is significant as it marks the first credit market on Base, potentially signaling the start of institutional DeFi momentum on L2.

zkSync

The payment main transaction count of zkSync Era has reached 150,000.

zkSync Era is a Layer 2 zkEVM created by Matter Labs, designed to scale Ethereum, processing about 1,000 payment main transactions daily on average, covering an increasing number of dApps. The payment main is a smart contract that allows dApps and wallets to sponsor user transactions and pay Gas fees using any ERC-20 token, with custom logic determining when users are eligible to use these features. The payment main on zkSync Era is enabled by the protocol's built-in native account abstraction functionality, eliminating the need for third-party bundlers like those in the ERC-4337 implementation.

Pudgy Penguins is entering the physical retail space through Pudgy Toys, a toy series featuring QR codes, serving as an entry point to the open digital player experience of Pudgy World on zkSync Era. Through the QR codes included with Pudgy Toys, 14,216 wallets have joined Pudgy World.

In recent weeks, zkSync Era and Arbitrum have led in daily transaction volume, averaging 500,000 to 800,000 transactions daily. In October, zkSync Era's total transaction count exceeded 150 million, making it one of the most tested L2s.

Starknet

Starknet has the highest number of active developers among all Layer 2s (515).

Starknet prides itself on having the most developers and the fastest adoption among all new ecosystems, ranking 7th among all crypto ecosystems. Over 80% of the projects are native to Starknet, with some excelling in Onchain Gaming (Loot Survivor, Briq, Influence, Dojo) and verticals like Argent, which fully adopts Account Abstraction, along with DeFi projects like Ekubo and RabbitX.

Starknet has achieved an average of 8.2 TPS since the 0.12 upgrade (called Quantum Leap) in August. However, this does not tell the whole story: due to native Account Abstraction (AA), Starknet's transactions are equivalent to 1.5 EVM transactions, benefiting from Multicall, which enhances user experience and security.

Starknet DeFi is on the rise, with AVNU (a DEX aggregator) achieving $500 million in trading volume after 5 months, while Ekubo (created by the former chief engineer of Uniswap) provides LPs with $600,000 annually, with a current TLV of $3 million. Despite the lack of incentive mechanisms, DeFi's TLV continues to grow.

Tx-Level Alpha: A random block on Starknet. This block consists of many Multicalls, as shown in the operations. These are direct results of native Account Abstractions (also known as Smart Wallets). In a single transaction, users can approve and swap, significantly enhancing user experience and security, as funds cannot be withdrawn by malicious actors from the resulting proxy. This also means that TPS is flawed, which is why L2Beat is pushing for UOPS (User Operations) as a new metric.