Bankless Review of Ethereum L2 Development in 2022: Growing against the tide, moving forward

原文标题：《 Bankless：L2 年度回顾 》

Original article by Ben Giove

The DeFi way

2022 was a dismal year for Crypto, with stablecoins, hedge funds, lenders and trading platforms all imploding in terrifying fashion. Much of the field collapsed, but there were pockets of growth amid the carnage. A prime example of this long-term growth is the Layer-2 ecosystem.

Ethereum's remarkable scaling solution quietly experienced the 2022 explosion, with many milestones in both the infrastructure and application tiers, and extraordinary growth in key KPIs.

With that in mind, let's take a look back at L2's 22 years and see if 2023 could be another breakout year.

Indicator snapshot

TVL

ETH denominated L2 TVL; Source: L2Beat

The dollar value of the assets the bridge connects to L2 fell 28.6 percent from $5.7 billion to $4.1 billion. However, this may be due to the drop in cryptocurrency prices rather than the withdrawal of user funds, as ETH denominated TVL rose by 120.6% from 1.6 million to 3.4 million. This suggests that L2, net of price, has significant liquidity inflows in 2022.

Trading volume

Arbitrum's monthly trading volume; Source: Dune Analytics

Arbitrum saw significant volume growth through 2022, driven by increased traction from native Dapps such as GMX and a Nitro upgrade that greatly reduced transaction fees. Transactions on the network grew 590% from 5 million in the first quarter to 34.9 million in the fourth quarter.

Optimism of monthly trading volumes; Source: Dune Analytics

Optimism has also experienced a substantial increase in trading volumes, possibly due to increased activity following the launch of the OP and subsequent incentive programmes. Optimism Optimism handled 3.2 million deals in the first quarter and 30.3 million deals in the fourth quarter, representing an 846.7% increase between the two periods.

user

Arbitrum monthly active user; Source: Dune Analytics

As noted earlier, Arbitrum experienced strong active user growth during 2022, driven by the use of applications such as GMX and the scalability upgrades to Nitro. L2's monthly average active users surged 559.1% from 91,800 in Q1 to 6.05 million in Q4.

Optimism of monthly active users; Source: Dune Analytics

Optimism among users has also experienced a significant increase during 2022. Riding the aforementioned wave of Token offerings and incentive programs, the number of positive monthly active addresses surged from an average of 33.1K in Q1 to 403.4K in Q4, an increase of 1,118.7%.

Highlight moment

The rise of GMX

GMX 作为 2022 年的突破性 L2 应用出现。当链上活动枯竭，价格下跌时，这个基于 Arbitrum 的去中心化永续交易平台的使用率飙升，通过促进 814 亿美元的交易量和创造 3300 万美元的收入，很好利用了 L2 增加的吞吐量。GMX 已经成为 Arbitrum 的核心基础，占网络 TVL 的 39.5%，许多项目如 Dopex、Vesta Finance、Rage Trade、Umami Finance 等都建立在 GMX 之上，并整合了平台的流动性 Token GLP。

这种增长，以及纳入收入分享的强大 Token 组，导致 GMX Token 成为所有加密货币中表现最好的资产之一，在 2022 年对美元和 ETH 分别上涨 87.4% 和 487.2%。

L2 Token 空投

几个知名的 L2 在 2022 年推出了 Token 。

其中最引人注目的是 Optimism，其向早期用户和利益相关者空投了 5% 的 OP 供应。这一 Token 的推出催化了网络上用户活动和流动性的上升，其 TVL 自 5 月 31 日推出之日起上涨了 86.9%。

另一个推出 Token 的 L2 是 zk-rollup 供应商 StarkWare。StarkWare 在 5 月份宣布以 80 亿美元的巨额估值进行融资，在 11 月中旬推出了他们的 STRK Token ，尽管目前还不能交易。

OP，当然还有 STRK，在分别用于去中心化 Optimism 和 StarkWare 定序器方面尚未释放其全部价值累积能力。尽管如此，二者的推出是 L2 Token 设计中令人兴奋的第一步，并将继续作为每个网络的重要战略工具。

zkSync is online

zkEVM is considered the Holy grail of scaling solutions because it combines the network effects and development tools of EVM with the tremendous throughput of zk-rollup.

However, no one seems to be touting zkSync, but they launched zkEVM, zkSync 2.0, Mainnet in October. It is worth noting that the network is still "baby alpha", the first of three phases of roll-out, which is not currently available for contract deployment or end users, but the network reaching the production stage still represents a huge achievement in scaling.

trough

The runaway of dYdX

A major low point for the L2 ecosystem in 2022 is dYdX's impending acquisition by Cosmos.

In June, the perpetual trading platform announced that it would migrate from StarkEx and choose to roll out its V4 as its application-specific blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK.

This is a substantial blow to the current L2 landscape, as dYdX is the largest decentralized perpetual trading platform, facilitating $461.2 billion in trading volume over the past 12 months.

dYdX's move has also led to speculation that many other well-known Dapps will migrate from Ethereum, escheeting the L2 ecosystem and choosing to build their own sovereign chains.

At present, such a mass exodus has not happened. However, dYdX's decision is a stark reminder that L2 will continue to face stiff competition.

Centralized vectors still exist

It might be harsh to call this a "low point" - but many L2 still continue to operate under the dominant trust assumption. For example, Arbitrum and Optimism have not yet fully implemented trust-free fraud prevention measures and decentralized sequentiers. In addition, each network can still be upgraded by the core team (albeit with a time-lock delay).

This is understandable because upgrades are new technology, and these centralized carriers act as guardrails to prevent the loss of user funds. However, these trust assumptions remain a source of risk going into 2023.

prospect

2023 promises many exciting developments for both existing and new L2.

Let's talk about a few of them:

Arbitrum

First, Arbitrum has a number of catalysts that could spur its growth in 2023.

In addition to the seemingly endless array of innovative DeFi apps being rolled out on L2, the network is poised to benefit from the revival of Arbitrum Odyssey. Odyssey is a campaign designed to encourage the use of well-known DApps on the Web by rewarding users with NFTs. Odyssey was delayed in Week 2 due to a spike in gas bills, but this activity should resume in the near future.

此外，Odyssey 也有可能成为 Arbitrum Token 推出的先驱。这种 Token 可能会被空投给早期用户和 Odyssey 参与者，同时被 dapps 用于激励计划。Arbitrum 对其 Token 的细节守口如瓶，但如果（当）它真的推出，很可能会导致用户活动和流入网络的流动性大幅飙升。

Optimism

Optimism is also expected to see another year of strong growth in 2023.

With the continued rollout of OP incentives and the upcoming second airdrop, Optimism is expected to deliver significant scalability improvements with the launch of Bedrock. Bedrock, which is currently being tested online, is an upcoming network upgrade that is expected to reduce the cost of submitting calldata to L1 and enable support for "alternative proof systems" such as zk-proofs.

Bedrock (along with the upcoming implementation of EIP-4844, which will dramatically reduce gas costs for all L2) should result in a significant increase in scalability of Optimism.

Optimism is also expected to see increased adoption of OP Stack, a development framework for creating custom L2. OP Stack is expected to see more adoption with the launch of Aevo, a decentralized options trading platform from Ribbon Finance, which will be built on an L2 that takes advantage of the stack.

Alt L2s

The two optimistic rollups aren't the only L2s poised to have a field day in 2023.

There are many L2 milestones that will be achieved, such as the mainnet rollout of Polygon and Scroll's zkEVMs.

As mentioned earlier, zkSync will continue to roll out in phases to support smart contract deployments and eventually the use of eager degens like me.

In addition, other networks, such as Fuel, a highly scalable ORU that utilizes Swell as its programming language, will also see further traction as developers become more familiar with their tools.

As we have seen, L2 is a rare point of growth in the ecosystem in 2022.

There have been many highlighter moments and no shortage of low points, but Ethereum is scaling up and 2023 will be another explosive year for L2.

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