State of Scaling Issue 1: dYdX, Arbitrum, Optimism

The main narrative for rollups was to scale Ethereum, but as the bear market continues on due in part to rising interest rates, the level of blockchain activity has been declining to the point where Ethereum block space becomes affordable again. Aside from the outlier on May 1, 2022, which was caused by the Otherside mint, Ethereum’s gas price has been gradually declining, with its 30-day-average falling from 98 gwei at the start of the year to 48 gwei as of this writing.

The trend of decreased blockchain activity is expected since a bear market is typically associated with lower on-chain activity and volumes. That said, it is interesting to note that the gas spent by Layer 2 (L2) sequencer contracts has been trending upwards over the same period. Though this trend has been skewed by the increased activity on Optimism due to the launch of their native governance token (OP) as well as the 8-week Arbitrum Odyssey on Arbitrum, which has already been postponed due to exorbitant gas prices.