Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the first ever Layer-2 Ecosystem Report.

Yes, you heard it correctly!

Major activities, outlooks, and updates that are bound to happen throughout the year in the L2 ecosystem can be found in this report. Pure Alpha regarding Arbitrum, Optimism, StarkWare ecosystem, and zkSync.

This report will serve as the foundation for all future updates. The report will be updated whenever Alpha is about to drop in the market. To avoid missing out, keep your Discord notifications turned on, whenever we post an update in the Pro Channel.

Let’s get started!

TLDR

• We speculate that Arbitrum will soon drop their native token.
• Arbitrum Odyssey will open up big exposure to everyone for the airdrop. Free NFTs in exchange for usage.
• There are many dApps in the Arbitrum ecosystem that are token-less (airdrop?)
• Optimism’s native token (OP) is currently trading live.
• 20 million OP tokens were hacked & stolen, but 17 million of those tokens have been restored.
• StarkGate: the Ethereum<>StarkNet bridge is live
• StarkNet & zkSync ecosystems have exceeded 100 projects.
• Airdrop Alpha below! 🪂 👀

Arbitrum

Arbitrum is the most popular Ethereum scaling solution with the highest network activity. Arbitrum works perfectly fine with a fantastic user experience. But, Arbitrum does not have a native token yet.

With Arbitrum's ongoing development and the launch of Optimism's native token (OP), we believe that these events will persuade Arbitrum to drop its native token very soon. Very likely in the upcoming months. With token launches, airdrops have become the go-to standard.

So, how do we qualify for the Arbitrum airdrop? let’s dive 👇

The Arbitrum Odyssey

The Arbitrum Odyssey is an 8-week event that allows users to try out and use apps in the Arbitrum ecosystem, for a chance to win 17 Arbitrum-exclusive free-mint NFTs. We anticipate that these NFTs will factor in the airdrop qualification process - try out the dApps, get free Arbitrum NFTs, and increase your odds to be eligible for an airdrop.

The NFT artists are Ratwell & Sugoi.

Timeline

The event will officially start on Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 at 1 pm EST.

The Whole Journey

There are 14 dApps included in the event that has been selected via snapshot votes by the community.

Week 1 of the event will involve transferring ETH to Arbitrum via decentralised bridges, or fiat-on-ramps, to begin the onboarding process. No minimum amount of ETH is required for bridging.

Note: the official Arbitrum bridge is not included in this initiative.

Decentralised bridges & fiat-on-ramps that are included in the event: Users who use the most popular decentralised bridge that everyone else uses will receive a bonus NFT. Bridge usage is judged by volume.

Once onboarding week is over, the journey will begin from week 2 until week 8.

2 projects will task their users to complete an on-chain task, specific to their protocol - i.e. lending, borrowing, providing liquidity, or buying an NFT.

This is what the entire event will look like during the 8 weeks:

Week 1: Bridge Week.

Week 2: Yield Protocol and Hashflow.

Week 3: Aboard Exchange and TofuNFT.

Week 4: Uniswap and Apex.

Week 5: 1inch and Izumi/ Yin Finance.

Week 6: Dodo and Swapr.

Week 7: TreasureDAO and Battlefly.

Week 8: Ideamarket and Sushi.

Users will claim Arbi-verse NFTs for completion of every task, representing their involvement. Claims will take place on Project Galaxy’s website here, after the end of each week. The mints will be completely free, but you will need ETH on Arbitrum to pay the transaction fee to claim the free NFT.

If a user collects at least 13 of the 16 NFTs along the way, they will receive a final prize NFT, indicating that their journey into the Arbi-verse is complete.

Participating in the event for 8 weeks should increase your chances of qualifying for an airdrop. However, it will cost at least $100 to do so.

More Airdrops 🪂

Many dApps in the Arbitrum ecosystem are token-less, and can be used to get an airdrop from the protocol itself:

• Across.
• Risk Harbor.
• Cozy Finance.
• Zapper.
• Zerion.
• Slingshot.
• Gnosis Safe.
• Hashflow.
• Volmex.
• Orbiter Finance.
• Preddy Finance.
• Twister Cash.

These dApps haven’t announced if they are releasing tokens, but trying them out on Arbitrum L2 is worth a shot. More L2 activity, more chance of receiving an Arbitrum token, and a token from each dApp.

These dApps are still in their early stages of development, so experiment with small amounts first.

Arbitrum Nitro

Arbitrum Nitro is a network upgrade that will update the current Arbitrum mainnet - Arbitrum One.

Nitro will eventually migrate with Arbitrum One. Currently, this upgrade is in its initial stage. When the migration happens, the only things users will notice are reduced fees and an overall faster experience.

XDEFI Wallet Integration

XDEFI is a non-custodial wallet that allows you to store, swap, and send, Crypto assets and NFTs across 12 different blockchains - multichain.

Arbitrum is now integrated into XDEFI wallet. Users can now send and receive any Arbitrum token on any L2 dApp, that is supported by XDEFI.

Try out XDEFI Wallet here.

Whether a token drops or not, it is great to dive into the ecosystem to explore new products, and potentially be awarded an airdrop.

Optimism (OP)

Optimism is the second largest Ethereum scaling solution, and they have recently made big progress in its development.

On April 6th, Optimism announced its native token (OP) for governance. OP entered the market on May 31st and is trading on major CEXs and DEXs.

However, it was not the most spectacular launch in history. Hours before the official launch and airdrop claim announcement, some people snuck in and claimed their OP airdrop early, and dumped them in the market, causing the price of OP to plummet.

Furthermore, on June 9th, a hacker stole 20 million OP tokens. The hacker sold 1 million OP tokens, further depressing the price. Fortunately, 17 million OP were restored on June 10th. The hacker returned the 17 million OP while keeping the other 2 million OP for himself.

Only 56.09% of users claimed their OP airdrop tokens.

Integrations

Optimism's ecosystem now includes Balancer X, Beethoven X, and Sushi. These dApps are now usable on Optimism Layer-2.

The Optimistic network is now supported by Binance, Bitget, Huobi, KuCoin, and MEXC Global. Optimism users can deposit and withdraw using centralised exchanges.

Many exchanges and protocols now support the Optimistic network, resulting in more network activity and usage by users, which impacts the price of OP.

[caption id="attachment_220118" align="aligncenter" width="1093"] 14.7% increase in TVL since the launch of OP.[/caption]

We will delve deeper into Optimism and OP in a separate report. Stay tuned for an announcement.

StarkWare Ecosystem

StarkWare is a company that utilizes 2 scaling solutions, StarkEx & StarkNet.

StarkWare is extremely valued high at $8B! with no token, and activity is only StarkEx (90% from dYdX).

StarkNet has been building so much in this bear market with very huge potential.

StarkNet

StarkNet has more potential than StarkEx, because it is versatile. On StarkNet, you can create a wide range of dApps, such as a DEX, bridges, games, and virtually any other type of application. Because of its architecture, StarkEx does not support this ability.

More than 120 projects are built on StarkNet! compared to 4 live dApps on StarkEx.

The ecosystem is vast, but no dApps are live. They are still in development and testing. 

StarkGate

You can now move assets from Ethereum mainnet to StarkNet mainnet through StarkGate - the Ethereum<>StarkNet bridge.

StarkGate was officially launched on May 5th, and over 300 ETH have been bridged over so far.

Try out the bridge here. However, you do need an Argent wallet. Argent supports StarkNet on PC only, but not smartphones.

Try out Argent wallet here. Recommended for a fantastic user experience. Argent does not have a token, and its usage has increased dramatically with L2 development.

Integrations

Maker

MakerDAO recently integrated with Starknet. The StarkNet DAI bridge is now operational on StarkGate, and over 74K DAI are deployed on StarkNet.

LayerSwap

LayerSwap allows users to bridge ETH directly from a CEX over to StarkNet, through gasless transfers.

LayerSwap supports every major CEX, Binance, FTX, Coinbase, Bittrex Global, KuCoin, Crypto.com, Huobi, Okex, Bitfinex and Kraken.

LayerSwap also supports Arbitrum, Optimism & zkSync.

LayerSwap is token-less.

Immutable X

Immutable X is an NFT marketplace live on StarkEx.

Immutable X now supports multiple ZK-Rollups including StarkEx and StarkNet.

This is the first-ever bridge between 2 different L2s.

Some projects may want to deploy parts of their projects to StarkNet, and parts to StarkEx.

Additionally, a portion of fees from every trade across either Rollup (StarkNet or StarkEx), as long as it’s processed through the Immutable X sequencer, will be shared with the IMX staking rewards pool.

With StarkNet, Layer-1 dApp games can be ported to Immutable X quickly.

The StarkNet ecosystem is rapidly expanding. We believe that once a StarkNet token is issued, this ecosystem will outperform. However, launching a token is still relatively early for StarkNet, because the ecosystem is not yet fully developed.

ZkSync

Another ZK-Rollup scaling solution for Ethereum is in its early stages.

ZkSync 1.0 (current mainnet) has no smart contracts. ZigZag, a DEX on zkSync 1.0, managed to be built without smart contracts. However, this was a limitation prohibiting further development in the project.

ZkSync 2.0, which is currently live on testnet, is the first EVM-compatible ZK-Rollup that includes Solidity smart contracts. ZkSync 2.0 will enable massive building and development across the ecosystem, unleashing zkSync's full potential.

SyncSwap is now live on zkSync 2.0 - a DEX on zkSync.

Aside from that, not much development or major updates have occurred, except for integrating dApps on L2.

There are hundreds of projects building on zkSync! Check them out all here.

ZkSync follows the same thesis as StarkNet. Outperforming once a token is launched. However, that is still far away, as there is a lot of work and building that needs to be done.

ZkSync officially confirmed a token on their website, on the tokenomics page.