Although current gas prices on the Ethereum Mainnet are in a range that many users would call reasonable, NFT traders will probably remember the gas wars the blockchain is susceptible to. For this reason, scaling solutions are trying to make their networks hospitable to both users and projects while maintaining compatibility with layer one. The latest to joint the effort is Quix, the leading Optimism NFT marketplace, who officially announced its NFT bridge connecting the network to the Mainnet on October 11.

Having a few days of activity to explore already, let’s look at the projects and users traversing the bridge.

The live dashboard and underlying queries can all be further explored in the dashboard below:

☝️ The dashboard can be updated on-demand by pressing the refresh button 🔄 in the top right corner of the page.

I. Overview

In its fourth* day after launch, we can see the bridge continuing its growth of activity and with plenty of time left of the day, it’s preparing to have its best day yet by both users and bridged NFTs.

Over this period, the 50 users sending their NFTs through this journey have experienced fees ranging between $2-$9 and waiting times of around 10 minutes with only slight variations.

*The first transaction was actually a few days earlier, on October 5, with the first NFT crossing the bridge being Robotos (ROBO) #7675.

II. Collections

So far there have been tokens from 19 different collections bridged to Optimism. Many of these collections only have one token being sent over so far, but we can see some being sent over in droves.

Some of the collections leading the pack are:

• iNFT Assets by Alethea AI

• Consensys: TheMerge

• MEV Army

• Chain Runners

However, the collection with the most tokens sent over by far is Aiko Virtual (AIKO), with 75 tokens (or 0.64% of the collection) already on Optimism.

All of the bridged collections and a summary of their activity can be further explored in the live dashboard table of section II. Furthermore, these tables contain the NFT contracts on both the L1 Ethereum Mainnet and the L2 Optimism network.

III. Users

Still during its first week, it is not a surprise to see that most of the bridge users are new users, but it is good to see that an ever-expanding number of users are interacting with the bridge.

One key aspect here is whether users return to use the bridge after their first day. We can see a few users doing so during these days, but the activity continues to be led by new users. It is important to be aware though that it’s likely we will not see a lot of recurring activity since NFTs are in more limited supply than fungible tokens and certain utility tying them to the mainnet might be a temporary deterrent until all projects adjust to properly connect with the bridged items.

In terms of collections driving the activity, we see familiar projects once again, such as TheMerge, Aiko Virtual and MEV Army.

The most active user has already sent over 22 tokens, all from one collection, you guessed it, Aiko Virtual. However, there are several others sending multiple NFTs over the bridge, as well as some who have sent tokens from more than one collection.

Conclusions

• The bridge continues to increase in activity in its fourth day after the public announcement.

• The bridging transaction is inexpensive and relatively fast.

• Multiple addresses have already sent tokens from 19 different collections over the bridge and their activity continues to diversify.

• The bridge continues to attract an increasing number of new users, but is yet to see a lot of returning users.