Arbitrum Nitro: Building On Year 1

Introduction – #L2’22?

You’ve seen it shilled on twitter, #L2’22, but is it true? In this report we’ll try to answer that question by looking at some Arbitrum adoption metrics: how it stacks up compared to other EVM chains, unique L2-specific metrics (with Optimism thrown in), and the overall state of the ecosystem. We’ll be focusing on on-chain data and what to expect from Arbitrum’s Nitro upgrade. This report assumes a basic understanding of rollups; for an extreme deep-dive on them, I refer you to John Charb’s latest bible.

State of EVM Chains

To start we must look at the landscape of alt-EVM chains. Few may remember, but there was a lot of skepticism, pushback and mocking when chains like BSC and Polygon popped up last year, with “L2s around the corner”. What actually happened is that these alt-EVM layer 1s got a significant amount of users as p