After the congestion issues experienced last week, now the news regarding the crypto Arbitrum project is definitely encouraging.
Even the same congestion problem of a few days ago could be interpreted as a good sign, now that it has been resolved.
Summary
The boom of volumes: the latest crypto news on the Arbitrum ecosystem
In particular, there has been a boom in trading volume on Arbitrum-based DeFi protocols.
It should be remembered that Arbitrum is a layer-2 of Ethereum, so it is advisable to compare its performance with that of the mainnet.
The peak of this period occurred on December 11th, when the total trading volume on Arbitrum-based DeFi protocols exceeded one billion dollars (in a single day).
However, this is a lower value compared to the annual peaks in March, when it reached nearly 1.3 billion dollars per day.
However, since October 23rd, the daily average has remained consistently above half a billion dollars, that is, since the awakening of the crypto markets.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of that volume (more than half) is generated by Uniswap alone, which is the most important decentralized exchange on Ethereum.
By analyzing specifically Uniswap, it is discovered that the boom in trading volumes started on October 20th on Ethereum, and then continued on Arbitrum as well.
In particular, weekly volumes indicate that starting from the week of October 15th, those on Arbitrum had already exceeded one billion dollars, and those on Ethereum reached 3.5 billion.
The peak occurred last week, the one of December 10th, when the weekly volumes on Ethereum skyrocketed to $6.5 billion, and those on Arbitrum to $2.2 billion.
The price of ARB
The Arbitrum token, ARB, however, continues to underperform in the crypto markets.
In fact, compared to a +5% in the last thirty days, in the last seven days it is down by 2%.
ARB made its debut on the crypto markets only this year, in March, with a price of $1.18. Currently, it is at $1.11, which is slightly below.
Excluding the brief senseless spikes touched near the launch, throughout the year it has never managed to rise above $1.8, but it has never fallen below $0.7.
Basically, he has been laterally moving since he was born, with significant excursions both upwards and downwards.
It should be noted, however, that the upward excursions occurred only in the first half of the year, while from August onwards it has been almost always below the average level.
Currently, it has only managed to recover that average level after having significantly dropped between September and October.
If compared to ETH, such comparison is merciless: Ethereum has risen until April, slightly decreased until October, and then between November and December it reached new annual highs. In other words, ARB’s performance in this 2023 is definitely disappointing so far.
The future of Arbitrum
However, it is necessary to distinguish the Arbitrum project from the ARB token.
Arbitrum is a layer-2 solution for Ethereum, and as such it is one of the most widely used along with Polygon.
On the contrary, in the DeFi sector, it is only behind Ethereum and Solana in terms of volumes, but significantly ahead of other Ethereum layer-2 solutions such as Polygon, Optimism, or Base.
Just think that recent trading volumes on DeFi protocols on Arbitrum are higher than the sum of all trading volumes on DeFi protocols based on other Ethereum layer-2s.
It can be stated, therefore, that in the DeFi sector Arbitrum is the most used layer-2 of Ethereum, while in the NFT sector it is Polygon.
In case of a new DeFi boom, Arbitrum could play a key role, especially regarding DEXs like Uniswap where low fees can attract many users fleeing from Ethereum.
However, it is difficult to imagine what consequences all this could have on the price of ARB, given that this year the recent increase in volumes has not been accompanied by a similar increase in the value of ARB.
However, it is worth noting that the price peak of ARB in April, excluding the absurd ones reached at the time of launch, occurred precisely in conjunction with the all-time high peaks in terms of trading volumes on DeFi protocols based on Arbitrum.
On DefiLlama it is possible to monitor the daily trading volumes on DeFi protocols for each chain, including Arbitrum.
