What’s driving the Massive OP Superchain transaction Growth?

OP Superchain’s pioneering concept of merging OP Mainnet and diverse L2/L3 chains into a unified, single network is a game-changing approach that has led to the creation of 29+ OP chains and over 1000 dApp projects translating to $15.5B+ TVL. Once again, OP Superchain is getting the limelight with its recent announcement of two-fold growth in daily transactions. Whether you are a developer, web3 enthusiast, or enterprise, you may want to know the factors behind such breathtaking OP Superchain transaction growth. Hence, through this article, we’ll discuss the main factors leading to this growth.

Post-Bedrock upgrade, OP Superchain has introduced significant improvements in scalability and decentralization. However, Superchain has rolled out a list of upgrades that will make the ecosystem a more powerful and feasible option for L2/L3s:

>Multi-Proof Security: OP Superchain plan to leverage for eliminating the challenges of withdrawal claims’ reliance on trusted chain attestors. The idea is to replace the trusted set of attestors with permissionless proofs to bring the entire dispute resolution thing on-chain.

>Low Latency L2 to L2 Message Passing: Inclusion of OP Stack’s modular proof system to remove latency issues. Here, one proof system allows for low-latency bridging while another proof system provides high-security and high-latency bridging.

>Synchronous Cross-Chain Transactions: Cross-chain transactions on the OP Superchain ecosystem are asynchronous which create problems for supporting cross-chain transactions. Hence, Superchain plans to bring synchronous cross-chain messaging to enable seamless cross-chain transactions.

>Alt-Data Availability Layer:  Publishing of transactions data on Superchain creates scalability limitations. To overcome this, OP Superchain is using a Plasma Protocol which allows 3rd party or alt-DA providers to supplement the limited DA of Layer1. 

Multi-Chain App Frameworks: With multi-chain app frameworks, OP Superchain will provide easy-to-use frameworks for the creation of scalable apps on top of OP Chains as well as an advanced wallet for ETH token management and apps across diverse OP Chains.

With benefits like 95% reduction in Ethereum’s fee, internet-level scaling, and advanced cross-chain interoperability, OP Superchain ecosystem has successfully projected tremendous growth since its inception. Though it has grown more rapidly in the past year. In the mid of 2023, OP Stack had around 20 chains which has now increased to 50+ L2/L3s which contributes to 150% growth in the number of chains. 

Similarly, total accounts are now 18,500,000+ and projects have reached to 1000+. Now, speaking about transactions, OP Superchain currently has 985.71M total transactions counter which was recorded around 380M in 2023. Hence, the total transaction growth is around 159.5%. The more OP Superchain will grow, the higher transactions it will record. Hence, the transaction data we are seeing right now is set to increase considerably in future.

OP Superchain is becoming a hub for innovative L2/L3s that are capable of driving massive transactions to the ecosystem. The top one among them is the Base Layer2 with its next-level capability of hyper scalability, rapid sequencing, interoperability, and governance with Coinbase’s support under the hood. Other popular OP stack chains are OP Mainnet, Mode, Zora, and Cyber.

Based on 1st July 2024’s data, Base has contributed 3.04M, Optimism mainnet- 412.48k, Mode- 124.84k, Zora- 120.84K, and Cyber- 44.4K. In percentage, Base contributes to approx 81.2% to OP Superchain transactions,  OP Mainnet;10.9%, Mode; 3.33%, Zora;3.22%, Cyber; 1.18%. 

Source: Dune Analytics

As discussed, such massive traction is resulting in dramatic growth of daily transactions on the   Superchain. Optimism on 2nd of August 2024 tweeted about record 4.5M + transactions on the Superchain, which makes up around 40% of aggregated L2s transactions volume. Here’s the tweet: 

As we know, DeFi and web3 gaming are the two genres of dApps that can often see millions of daily active users and billions of transactions coming from their accounts. Earlier, there was an argument that Optimistic rollups are not very much suitable for high-traction chains. But, after OP Stack’s bedrock upgrade and introduction  of fault proof, OP Superchain is now trending across DeFi and game projects. Let’s briefly look at these chains. Note that the analysis is based on August 2024’s data: 

Mode: 4.09%  – Mode is designed as a modular DeFi-based Layer2 chain that enables developers to build powerful and highly-scalable DeFi use cases and meanwhile scale their existing applications to support on-chain finance. With 40,395,084 total transactions, Mode contributes to around 4.09% of total OP Superchain transactions.Orderly Network: 2.00% – Robust and fully permissionless liquidity layer designed to empower web3 trading. The chain recently made an announcement about its milestone of achieving daily trading volume of $1.8 Billion, a new all-time high record. For all the projects that are building on Orderly Network, it serves as a core infrastructure that supports perpetual and spot future markets. As this chain grows tremendously, it has a total transactions of 19,746,103, which contributes to around 2.0% to the Superchain transactions. 

Lyra: 1.22%- Layer2 scaling solution built as a decentralized trading platform that offers extremely high throughput, cheaper transactions, and the robust Ethereum security to dApps. Lyra contributes 1.22% into OP Superchain transactions with total transactions of  12,076,834.opBNB: 0.65%-High-performance Layer2 designed specifically to scale BNB Smart chain, meanwhile addressing the unique challenges and requirements of the BSC ecosystem, for example; reducing gas fee, augmenting gas limit, and adding cost-effectiveness to the protocol. opBNB makes up around 0.65% of OP Superchain’s transactions with its total 6389353 transactions. The chain saw its highest number of transactions on 28th of December 2023; 71,371,179. 

Kroma: 3.09%- A leading gaming-focused Layer2 scaling solution that serves the new-gen gaming industry. With OP Superchain, Kroma aims to become Asia’s leading L2 chain that provides a highly scalable, secure, and efficient platform for developers. With a total transaction count of 30,492,377, Kroma contributes to 3.09% of OP Superchain’s total transactions.

Ancient8: 1.21%- Layer2 Gaming OP Stack chain built to transform the gaming industry. Being a part of the OP Superchain ecosystem, Ancient8 has the aim to onboard millions of players into the Web3 gaming landscape with its scalable, cost-efficient, and seamless experiences. Ancient8 adds 1.21% of superchain transactions with its 11,925,441 total transactions.GameSwift: 0.27%- Modular gaming L2 chain built to empower gaming projects with specific needs and challenges facing game developers. GameSwift is currently live with testnet, it makes up 0.27% of Superchain ecosystem’s transactions with 2,675,506 total transactions. It’s a testament that GameSwift is pumping up to contribute massive transactions to the Superchain ecosystem. 

At the moment, OP Stack framework is the most matured and mainnet-ready Optimistic rollup framework due to its future-proof upgrades, progress in decentralization, advanced integration support, and other comprehensive offerings.  All types of 3rd party rollup services like Alt DA, Decentralized sequencer, explorer, wallet, or account abstraction SDKs have added support to OP Stack. Likewise, RaaS service keeps OP Stack on top of their rollup framework’s list. 

OP Stack made a sensation in the rollup space with their permissionless, governance-approved fault proofs that went live in June 2024. With fault proof, OP Stack has now reached  ‘Stage 1’ decentralization. 

This permissionless fault proof is mainly designed to improve the user experience for the OP Superchain. Users can now withdraw ERC token and ETH from their preferred OP Stack chain without needing to include a third-party service. Also, anyone can now contribute to Superchain security as they can directly challenge invalid withdrawals. 

Such fantastic and much-needed upgrades maximize the performance of OP Stack chains, assisting them to build a better user base with minimal effort, accommodate more transactions, and eventually contribute to transaction growth of OP Superchain. Popular OP Stack chains like Base, Metal, Zora, and Made have included this OP Stack functionality into their networks. With more L2/L3s upgrading to Fault Proofs, OP Superchain will see drastic increase in the future transactions. 

OP Superchain’s initiative of creating an interconnected, horizontally scalable network OP Stack chains and Optimism mainnet is a gaming-changing approach to power chains with seamless interoperability & interchangeability.  

All the chains in the Superchain ecosystem share a common communication layer and hence these can support creation of high-performance cross-chain dApps without creating systemic risk or leading to large overhead. 

Rich cross-chain functionality allows dApps users to engage better in activities such as swapping, staking, or inter-chain deposits. Hence, this directly leads to growth in overall transactions for all kinds of chains, be it DeFi, gaming, tokenization, or general-purpose chains. 

The rapid growth of the OP Superchain ecosystem and constant upgrades has been encouraging various web3 projects to tap into the Superchain ecosystem and build powerful L2/L3s. Businesses with custom, application-specific requirements are building their own OP Chain while dApps looking for unparalleled decentralization, cross-chain, interoperability, and high-end security are deploying on the Optimism mainnet. 

If you are interested in building an OP Stack chain, Zeeve RaaS can help you to save significant cost and meanwhile guarantee faster time-to-market. Our modular RaaS services for OP Stack includes 40+ rollup integration offerings like Alt-DA, decentralized sequencer, MPC wallets, account abstraction (AA) layer, and more. What’s more interesting is that you can set up a testnet for your OP Stack chain, all by yourself on a low-code RaaS Platform in minutes. Feel free to connect with us for more information or to know about our rollup & blockchain-related offerings.