November Layer 2 Landscape Recap

The crypto markets rallied significantly in November, resulting in sharp increases in TVL and trading activity across the board. However, the uptick in activity did not translate to increased on-chain activity across all layer 2s (L2s). The number of transactions and unique addresses varied across all the rollups, with a handful seeing 20 to 30% increases while others saw declines of 60 to 70%. Nonetheless, as gas prices begin to climb on Ethereum, it may not be long before we see on-chain activity being driven to more L2s.

One of the more notable developments this month would be the sharp increase in volume on Aevo, an options and perpetuals exchange L2. While Aevo has been around since 2020, it was a permissioned application until April 2023, when it launched its decentralized options exchange as an L2 that leveraged the OP Stack. To date, Aevo has processed over $10 billion of options trading volume.