The comparison between Arbitrum and Optimism is still a hot topic in the Crypto market as loyal fans from both sides always point out the good sides of their platforms. So what is the best Layer 2 platform today? Let’s find out together in the article below.
To better understand this article, people can refer to some of the documents below:
- What is Arbitrum (ARB)? Arbitrum Cryptocurrency Overview
- What is Optimism (OP)? Overview of Cryptocurrency Optimism
- Crypto Unlock | Optimism Superchain & The Future For Layer 2
- Crypto Unlock | Arbitrum Orbit Is A Competitor To Optimism Superchain
- Arbitrum Vs Optimism: Who Is The Leader?
Comparing Arbitrum And Optimism
In this comprehensive comparison of Arbitrum and Optimism, we will go through all the factors that help form and promote the ecosystem to become successful in the future such as Development Team, Investment Fund, System. ecology & achievements, Development roadmap, Community building,… Through studying the full pieces of the puzzle, it makes it easier for us to compare the two platforms.
Note: All reviews are objective opinions from Weakhand and will be consistent with the period from the past up to the time of writing. In fact, in the future, factors will gradually change and the article may no longer be 100% relevant.
Development team
As far as I can see, there is a similarity between the development team of Optimism and Arbitrum, which is relatively little experience in learning, working and developing at traditional companies and corporations. Most development teams only have a short time working at traditional companies after approaching the Crypto market, then they immediately grasp the opportunity and participate in the Crypto market.
Offchain Labs team
However, Arbitrum has a difference coming from Ed Felten acting as Co Founder and Research Director of Offchain Labs:
- Ed Felten holds a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington.
- Ed Felten spent some time working as Chief Engineer at the Federal Trade Commission under the Government and then he worked as a senior leader as Deputy Director of US Technology at the US White House.
- In September 2018, along with some colleagues Ed Felten founded Offchain Labs. At the same time, Ed Felten is also working as a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
What Ed Felten contributes to Offchain Labs in particular and the entire Layer 2 industry in general is not only the technology factor but also the network of traditional relationships, legal knowledge, etc. Therefore, considering the development team factor, it is clear that Arbitrum has a more stable reward provider than Optimism.
ARBITRUM 1 – 0 OPTIMISM
Investors
From 2020 until now, Optimism has gone through 3 capital calls with a total successful call of $178.5M from a few focused investment funds such as Paradigm, IDEO CoLab Ventures, A16Z and Nascent. In the Series B round that the platform called in March 2022, Optimism is being valued at $1.5B. Not only that, in November 2022, Cynegetic Investment Management invested in Optimism with undisclosed information.
Besides, Arbitrum has gone through 3 calling rounds including Seed, Series A and Series B successfully calling for $123.7M from many investment funds such as Pantera, Polychain Capital, Ribbit Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Pantera Capital, Alameda Research, Mark Cuban. The most recent round took place at the end of August 2021, Arbitrum is being valued at $1.1B.
Until Arbitrum calls for capital next time, there is a high possibility that in terms of investors, Optimism is becoming more attractive. Although the comparison is a bit lame because the time Arbitrum valued $1.1B compared to Optimism’s $1.5B was nearly 6 months apart,
ARBITRUM 1 – 1 OPTIMISM
About the ecosystem & what has been done
We’ve talked a lot about the Arbitrum & Optimism ecosystem in the past, but now we have something new. However, the core point in these two ecosystems is the way they approach developers on their platforms. Optimism requires early stage developers to KYC with the platform, which clearly goes against the spirit of Blockchain which is Decentralization and anonymity.
In contrast, Arbitrum has the approach of welcoming all developers, whether anonymous or not, so the entire anonymous developer population on Ethereum mainly migrates to Arbitrum.
- Arbitrum: Choose Perp DEX as the spearhead with GMX or in one place GMX is the platform that allows projects to “build up” on it to form the GMX ecosystem and somewhere in the Gaming segment with the Treasure DAO project. Arbitrum’s ecosystem is somewhat more cohesive and Ponzi-like than Optimism’s. There are more and more Native projects on Arbitrum such as Camelot, Vertex Protocol,…
- Optimism: Choose people to trust like Synthetix, Perpetual and AAVE, but Perpetual failed against GMX, AAVE did not leave too much of an impression and Synthetix would not be too successful without a direct OP incentive from the Optimism Foundation. Currently, the main traction comes from the Velodrome. Some Native projects are not as successful as Pika Protocol.
Obviously, in terms of its own ecosystem, Arbitrum is superior to Optimism. Not only that, some of the technological factors I present below can help Arbitrum continue to create a gap in the ecosystem compared to Optimism, which invisibly causes Optimism to focus more on Superchain.
ARBITRUM 2 – 1 OPTIMISM
About core technology
In terms of technology, both Arbitrum & Optimism are Optimistic Rollup platforms but there will be a few differences such as:
- Dispute resolution: While Optimism resolves disputes by re-executing that transaction, Arbitrum will use multi-round rollup, which means breaking up the dispute until it becomes a very small dispute and resolving it on-chain. . It can be seen that Optimism is more about scalability, while Arbitrum will focus more on network security.
- Arbitrum’s EVM compatibility is also somewhat better than Optimism’s.
Besides, from the time of Optimism’s launch until now, the network has only undergone one Bedrock upgrade, but this update seems to be more geared towards Superchain. During the same period:
- Arbitrum upgraded from Arbitrum One to Nitro about 9 months before Bedrock. This is also the first upgrade of the Arbitrum network.
- Arbitrum also launched the Arbitrum Nova network – a network suitable for Gaming and NFT projects but was not too successful.
- Arbitrum also introduced a new transaction proof, BOLD, which greatly improves the security of the Arbitrum network.
- Arbitrum launched the Stylus update in the context of Optimism having just successfully upgraded Bedrock. Stylus, in addition to increasing scalability, also integrates the RUST programming language, which can have a strong impact on Arbitrum’s ecosystem.
- Arbitrum launched Layer 3 as Arbitrum Orbit simultaneously with Optimism’s Superchain.
Through the above factors, we look back at a domino like Arbitrum’s human element is more prominent in technology, leading to the Arbitrum network also developing faster, thereby creating a breakthrough for the ecosystem. Thai.
ARBITRUM 3 – 1 OPTIMISM
Community interest & FOMO
To put it simply, the current user interest in Optimism is the story of Superchain and Arbitrum, which is Layer 3, also known as Arbitrum Orbit. It is not natural that users are so interested in Layer 3, that comes from the fact that all the big players in Layer 2 simultaneously announced:
- Optimism announced Superchain towards Layer 2 and Layer 3. Visualizing the Superchain model is similar to the current Cosmos model.
- Arbitrum announced that Arbitrum Orbit is a Layer 3 technology built on the Layer 2 platforms that Arbitrum has perfected for a long time.
- ZkSync also announced its Layer 3 vision with ZK Credo with its components being ZK Stack, Hyperchains and Hyperbridges. It can be said that if Cosmos is the Internet of BLockchain on Layer 1, then Superchain is the Internet of BLockchain on Layer 2, and with zkSync it is the Internet of BLockchain on Layer 3.
- Starknet also introduced the current Starknet Stack which will be Layer 2 but will move to Layer 3 in the future.
Clearly, in terms of interest & FOMO with the community, Arbitrum is doing worse than Optimism. Not only that, with Base, Binance, Polygon,… all building Layer 2 on OP Stack, the community believes in Optimism even more. Besides, Optimism’s DAO implementation is also interesting and cool like:
- Releasing Law of Chain for Superchain in the future, Base is now involved with exchanging protocol revenue/profits for OP to participate in the DAO.
- Dividing DAO into a multi-party system like in the US makes the above decisions more informed.
ARBITRUM 3 – 2 OPTIMISM
Tokenomics comparison
The common point of both Optimism and Arbitrum is that the amount of tokens allocated to Core Team, Advisor and Investor will be locked for 1 year and gradually opened over the next 3 years. However, there are some differences such as:
- Optimism’s airdrop is divided into many stages, causing users to continue to have FOMO later. However, Optimism’s Quest 2 has caused great disappointment with the community. Quite a few brothers have climbed to the top.
- Optimism projects must apply to receive Incentive, while Arbitrum awards them to qualified projects. However, in actual implementation, Optimism’s implementation is getting better. Arbitrum’s initial deployment was not very successful but we can wait for the next 50M ARB.
- Currently with Superchain and Layer 3, the factor of whether to use OP or ARB as a fee is unclear. However, if Optimism goes in the direction of Cosmos, it will be quite a loss for OP in the context of Superchain still developing strongly.
However, if you look at the current capitalization of Optimism and Arbitrum, Optimism has a much lower valuation than Arbitrum, the reason may mainly come from the ecosystem. Obviously, in terms of Risk & Reward, Optimism has the advantage.
ARBITRUM 3 – 3 OPTIMISM
Of course, if the comparison card ends up being a draw, it will be quite unreasonable because if the comparison is drawn and it ends up being a draw, that’s not good. Therefore, the Weakhand team will rely on a factor of personal feeling to evaluate.
Personal opinion
I myself have followed both Optimism and Arbitrum ecosystems quite closely from 2021 until now. Through the changes in the ecosystem through monthly updates, I personally lean more towards Arbitrum than Arbitrum. Optimism. However, in Weakhand’s team, there are also a few members who love Optimism more because they like Superchain more than Layer 3.
However, why do I not have much sympathy for Superchain because of the following reasons:
- Currently, OP has not received much value from Superchain, if not at all. ATOM’s mistakes are still there.
- Superchain with the goal of creating many Layer 2s, I see that having too many Layer 2s does not solve much like the story of Layer 1, we have seen very clearly that Cardano, Monero, NEO,… have also gone away. There is Ethereum still standing after thousands of battles. I believe the story of Layer 2 will be the same.
- I prefer to focus on the scalability of Layer 3. Because even if hundreds of Layer 2s are created, Optimism’s expansion problem will be passed on to other Layer 2s, and Layer 3 has a better expansion story.
ARBITRUM 4 – 3 OPTIMISM
Summary
So based on subjective analysis factors, Arbitrum is temporarily more dominant than Optimism thanks to the decisive goal from author JP aka Quang Truong. Hopefully through this article everyone can have more information to compare Arbitrum and Optimism.
