WorldCoin’s launch propels Optimism, but at what cost?

• On 27 July, Optimism’s daily transaction count exceeded Arbitrum for the first time since January.
• Following a few hours of traction, attention has shifted from its OP token.  

On 27 July, Layer 2 (L2) blockchain network Optimism [OP] recorded a higher daily transaction count than Arbitrum [ARB], marking the first time this has happened since January, data from Blockscan revealed. 

Read Optimism’s [OP] Price Prediction 2023-24

The surge in Optimism’s network activity was attributed primarily to the launch of Worldcoin [WLD] – the cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman designed to solve the problems of income inequality and online identity authentication.

On 11 May, Worldcoin announced its decision to move the launch of its World App, which was originally planned to go live on the Polygon Network, to Optimism.

World ID & World App are coming to the @OptimismFND Mainnet 🪩 🔴https://t.co/0utgzeWihY

— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) May 11, 2023

Worldcoin’s decision to switch platforms indicated a strategic move to explore new opportunities and leverage the capabilities offered by Optimism. According to the press release:

“With more than 1.6 million sign-ups in beta and 500,000+ monthly active World App users, the deployments on OP Mainnet will expand access and help Worldcoin reach a values-aligned ecosystem of developers and users.”

Thanks to Worldcoin, Optimism has…

As of 27 July, the daily transactions count on Optimism touched 944,000. Conversely, Arbitrum logged a daily transaction count of 660,000 on the same day. 

Source: Artemis

With increased activity on Optimism, daily active addresses on the blockchain have climbed since Worldcoin’s launch, data from Artemis showed. Since the project went live on OP’s mainnet on 24 July, daily active addresses on the blockchain network have increased by 22%. While the unique address count on Arbitrum increased as well, it has only rallied by 2% during the same period. 

Also, with growing attention to the L2 network, Optimism has experienced an increase in the total value of assets locked (TVL) within its decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Per data from Artemis, Optimism’s TVL has grown by 4% since Worldcoin launched five days ago.  

Within a 7-day window period, Optimism’s TVL has shot up by 15%. Arbitrum, on the other hand, saw its TVL drop by 3% during the same period. 

Nevertheless, Arbitrum maintains its position as the L2 solution with the highest TVL of $5.98 billion, holding more than 55% of the L2 market share, per data from L2Beat. Optimism trails behind it with a TVL of $2.9 billion. 

Source: Optimism

Not much has changed for OP

At press time, the price OP token was $1.51. Since Worldcoin launched, the alt’s value has dropped by 4%, per data from CoinMarketCap.

Read Arbitrum’s [ARB] Price Prediction 2023-24

On-chain data from Santiment revealed a sharp uptick in daily demand and active address count for OP following Worldcoin’s launch. However, this has begun to drop with attention shifting away from the project.

Source: Santiment

Also, after a few days of logging profitable trades, the ratio of OP’s transactions in losses exceeded those that returned profit at press time.

Source: Santiment