
As Ethereum (ETH) continues to be affected by excessive fuel charges, the layer 2 (L2) scaling answer Optimism is predicted to launch a serious improve on November 11.
“There may be progress being made in direction of scalability by way of L2 scaling options that promise decrease charges and full alignment with Ethereum. This Thursday (November eleventh) the L2 answer Optimism is about to launch one in all its greatest upgrades which can, amongst different issues, tremendously enhance the developer expertise constructing on Optimism,” in keeping with crypto evaluation agency Coin Metrics.
Layer 1 (L1) is the bottom protocol (the Ethereum blockchain), whereas L2 is any protocol constructed on high of Ethereum.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) startup Optimism introduced “the largest replace in Optimistic Ethereum’s historical past: OVM 2.0” in September, as “the only, least expensive, and quickest model of OE [Optimistic Ethereum] but.” Then in late October, they described it as “a brand new gold normal for L2s.”
Per this Twitter thread, Optimistic Ethereum will develop into the primary [Ethereum virtual machine] Equal L2, which meant that the majority of their customized code can be reduce out “in favor of merely utilizing an present Ethereum consumer — Geth.”
In the meantime, as reported in mid-July, Optimism launched the long-awaited Alpha L2 answer for main decentralized alternate (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) by means of the Optimistic Ethereum mainnet.
The charges are ‘pricing out’ sure actors
An answer cannot come quick sufficient as Ethereum fuel charges are again on the rise with exercise on the community choosing up.
As of Tuesday this week, the 7-day shifting common of the imply Ethereum transaction charge stood at USD 47.7, down from a peak of USD 52 per week earlier, in keeping with information from BitInfoCharts.
Coin Metrics wrote in its newest State of the Community report that some actions have now develop into prohibitively costly on Ethereum.
“Even after adjusting for the rise in ETH’s value in USD phrases, charges are nonetheless rising in native items. The excessive charges are beginning to value out sure financial exercise resembling small transfers beneath [USD] 100 in worth which have dropped off with the rise in charges,” the report mentioned.

Additional, the agency additionally mentioned that not like this summer, when excessive fuel costs plagued the Ethereum community as non-fungible token (NFT) buying and selling took off, the digital artwork items are doubtless to not blame for the most recent rise in charges.
The rationale Coin Metrics cited for that is that every day transfers of ERC-721 tokens – the usual that NFTs are constructed on – is down from a peak of about 200,000 per day in early September to a mean of 67,000 over the past week.
As an alternative, the report hinted that buying and selling on DEXs may very well be a contributing issue, describing this exercise as “much less cost-sensitive.” Particularly, it cited an uptick within the variety of trades and distinctive consumers in latest weeks on Uniswap.

Along with DEX buying and selling, nevertheless, the latest meme coin mania might also be taking part in a task, provided that the not too long ago sizzling, self-proclaimed “dogecoin killer,” shiba inu (SHIB), is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token.
“For instance, on October 28th over 100K ETH addresses interacted with SHIB whereas 133K transactions concerned the token that day, ~9% of the 1.5M ETH transactions that day,” Coin Metrics mentioned.
The evaluation agency additional famous that prime fuel charges stay “a double-edged sword” for Ethereum. On one facet, it’s a certain signal that exercise on the protocol is excessive, indicating sturdy person demand, however on the opposite, as famous, the charges are “pricing out” sure actors and actions.
At press time (12:37 UTC) on Wednesday, ETH traded at USD 4,746, down slightly below 1% for the previous 24 hours and up 3.2% for the week.
____
Be taught extra:
– Ethereum and Uniswap Tank Despite Optimism News
– DYDX Soars as Protocol Sees Trading Volume Double That of Coinbase
– Ethereum Tests All-Time High as On-Chain Activity Grows, SHIB Burns ETH
– Ethereum’s EIP-1559 Helped Coinbase Save ETH 27 on Daily Fees
– USD 0.5 Million Paid in Failed Ethereum Transaction
– DeversiFi Explains What Caused the USD 23M Transaction Fee on Ethereum
– Altcoins in for a Bumper 2022 as Number of Crypto Traders Set to Double – Report
– Altcoins Eclipse Combined Bitcoin, Ethereum Transaction Volumes on Coinbase