Optimism network transactions surged 67% following Bedrock upgrade

The Optimism layer-2 network did less than 300,000 transactions per day around the time of the upgrade, but this increased to over 500,000 afterward.

Transactions on the Optimism (OP) network surged 67% after its June 7 “Bedrock” upgrade, according to a June 26 Twitter thread from blockchain analytics firm Nansen. The network was doing less than 300,000 transactions per day before the upgrade, but this increased to over 550,000 by the middle of June.

Since Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade on June 6

Its daily transactions have increased by about 67% to ~500k

And gas fees are reduced by about 50% to ~$50k pic.twitter.com/9ACIMMFHbl

— Nansen (@nansen_ai) June 26, 2023

Optimism, a layer 2 of Ethereum, implemented its Bedrock hard fork on June 6. It was intended to reduce deposit times and fees, as well as increase the network’s security. According to the June 26 Nansen report, daily fees have fallen from $80,000 worth of Ether (ETH) right before the upgrade to only $50,000 in late June.

Optimism saw a sharp increase in transactions immediately after the hard fork, rising to over 400,000 from approximately June 5-9. Volume rose slower after the initial spike, reaching a peak of over 550,000 on or around June 15. It then started to fall slowly, reaching 500,000 transactions per day by the end of the time data was collected around June 23, according to a chart posted in Nansen’s Twitter thread.

The top Optimism app leading up to the report was the decentralized credential protocol Galaxe, which did over 528,000 transactions over the week. Stablecoin US Dollar Coin (USDC) had the second-highest transaction count at over 170,000. The remaining top five apps on Optimism included the Stargate Finance cross-chain bridge, futures trading app Perpetual Protocol, and Gnosis Safe multi-sig wallet.

The Bedrock upgrade was part of a broader set of proposals to create a “Superchain” consisting of multiple blockchain networks that rely on the same software for security and interoperability. Coinbase confirmed that its Base network would join Optimism as part of the Superchain. The Base team announced a “Path to Mainnet” or preliminary roadmap on May 24.