Even Ethereum Layer 2 Solutions Are Earning Significantly Higher Fee Revenue than Bitcoin

Ethereum is a clear winner when it comes to earning fees. This second-largest network generated $22.6 million in transaction fee revenue in the past 24 hours and more than $45 million on a 7-day average.

When it comes to its competitors, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) made $1.68 million in 1-day fees but still comes at 3rd place while Avalanche is doing just under $268k, Cardano $49k, and Polkadot $253, according to CryptoFees.

It is the popular DEX Uniswap that is the second-highest fee earner at just over $3 million. As for other decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, Aave is recording $1.3 million, SushiSwap $1.2 million, Compound $996 million, MakerDAO $140k, and Polygon $33k in the past 24 hours.

In all of this, the largest network, Bitcoin, falls at 9th place by generating roughly $400k in 1-day fees. This low fee is resulting in a drop in revenue from fees as a percentage of total miner revenue to a mere 1.3%, the lowest since January 2020.

The use of Layer 2 solution Lightning Network could also be a reason for this, whose capacity has been increasing throughout the year, going from 1,050 BTC to a new ATH of 2,583 BTC now.

We‘ve been told for years that this trend will reverse. What catalyst(s) will make it happen? https://t.co/O2KHrI1zrn

— Hasu (@hasufl) September 12, 2021

Even Arbitrum, Ethereum Layer 2 solution, generated more fees at over $613k than Bitcoin. Arbitrum’s competitor, meanwhile, comes just a step below Bitcoin at roughly $332k.

Arbitrum has been outshining the EVM-compatibility competitors despite a flurry of liquidity mining announcements coming from Avalanche, Fantom, and Harmony.

On Sept. 10 and 11, Arbitrum’s bridge contact recorded a sharp increase that sent its total value locked (TVL) to $2.1 billion, from $173 million.

However, most capital in Arbitrum right now is farming speculative projects. But with projects like Aave, Balancer, Chainlink, Coinbase Wallet, DAI, Curve, Cream Finance, Etherscan, Gnosis Safe, Infura, Metamask, OKEx, Nansen, perpetual protocol, Sushi, The Graph, Tether, USDC, Uniswap, WBTC, Zapper, and many others soon to be deployed on Arbitrum, this could change really quickly.

Ethereum layer 2 season 🚀 pic.twitter.com/Rg07KombXm

— Anthony Wassano 🦇🔊 (@sassal0x) September 15, 2021

According to Dune Analytics, TVL on Arbitrum Bridge jumped another 25% in the past week to $2.7 billion, while a 51% increase was recorded on Optimism ERC20 Bridges, standing at $37.6 million.

Arbitrum Bridge currently accounts for 34.6% share of Ethereum bridges TVL followed by Polygon ETC20 Bridge at 30.4% share, Avalanche Bridge at 24.4%, and Fantom Anyswap Bridge at 6.3%.

When it comes to the breakdown of assets being bridged out of Ethereum, WETH/ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI, and WBTC account for nearly 90% of asset value.

Daily unique validators on Arbitrum are currently 81, down from the 588 peak from last week. Optimism saw a huge jump in deposits on Sept 11 as it went from 234 to 9828 in a day only to get more than halved in the next couple of days and currently at 446.

Arbitrum’s take-off in early September actually coincided with a sharp decrease in the daily median gas price on Ethereum mainnet. But it’s to be seen if it is just a coincidence or a causal relationship as NFTs also lost steam around this time, which has been the biggest contributor to the increase in gas prices.