Overview of Optimism ecosystem projects: Synthetix accounts for nearly half of the TVL

Author: iambabywhale.eth, ForesightNews

Optimism officially announced the issuance of the token OP and conducted a retroactive airdrop early this morning. It is worth mentioning that the official statement indicates that Optimism will conduct more than one round of airdrops, and users who actively participate in protocol interactions may still have the opportunity to receive airdrops. Therefore, it is particularly important to understand which projects on Optimism are worth participating in.

As the only Rollup solution that has achieved "EVM equivalence," Optimism has unique advantages in terms of friendliness to Ethereum ecosystem developers and ease of migration. However, perhaps due to the recent lifting of whitelist restrictions and the downward market trend, Optimism not only lags behind Arbitrum in terms of ecosystem prosperity but also has a total TVL that is 30% lower than that of dYdX alone on StarkEx. Nevertheless, in March of this year, Optimism completed a $150 million financing led by Paradigm and a16z at a valuation of $1.65 billion, setting a record for Ethereum Layer 2, and its TVL has recently reached new highs, clearly accelerating its development pace.

Given that there are currently relatively few native projects on Optimism, and almost no well-known projects outside of the DeFi track, I will start by introducing some of the featured projects on Optimism as one of the "main battlefields."

Featured Projects on Optimism

The featured projects on Optimism are all DeFi projects, among which the synthetic asset protocol Synthetix and its ecosystem's options and asset management protocols account for a significant portion, while the remaining projects are closely related to trading.

Synthetix and Its Ecosystem Projects

As a project that officially announced its launch on Optimism in July 2021, the synthetic asset protocol Synthetix is at the forefront. According to DeFiLlama data, of the total TVL of just over $500 million on Optimism, Synthetix alone accounts for $225 million, nearly 45%. Currently, the only blockchains supported by Synthetix, besides Optimism, are Ethereum, and its ecosystem projects Kwenta, Lyra, Thales, and dHEDGE have also launched on Optimism.

Synthetix is one of the earliest DeFi projects, allowing users to mint the USD stablecoin sUSD by over-collateralizing its native token SNX, and trade synthetic assets including sETH, sBTC, and even precious metals like gold and silver, as well as stocks of well-known U.S. companies in its market. Last week, Synthetix initiated a reward for veCRV holders to vote on the sUSD-3CRV pool on Curve on Optimism to further stimulate liquidity growth.

The Synthetix ecosystem's layer two options protocol Lyra migrated all its liquidity to Optimism at the end of last year, becoming a native DeFi project on Optimism, supporting options trading for ETH, BTC, LINK, and SOL using sUSD; Thales, as a derivatives protocol in the Synthetix ecosystem, has also become a native protocol on Optimism, allowing the purchase of call and put options for over 10 assets using sUSD; dHEDGE is an asset management protocol based on Synthetix's native assets, supporting assets on Polygon in addition to Ethereum and Optimism.

Pika Protocol

Pika Protocol is a decentralized perpetual contract protocol native to Optimism, supporting up to 50x leverage for perpetual contract trading of BTC, ETH, LINK, SOL, AVAX, and SNX.

Clipper

Clipper is a DEX launched by cryptocurrency exchange developer Shipyard Software in June 2021, which raised $4 million in equity financing led by Polychain Capital and received $17 million in initial liquidity from Polychain, Nascent, and Three Arrows Capital. Clipper reduces the gas fees required for trading through liquidity aggregation, optimized AMM, and simplified on-chain calculations. Currently, Clipper supports Ethereum, Polygon, and Moonbeam in addition to Optimism.

Rubicon

Rubicon is an order book model DEX that is currently only available on Optimism, with plans to launch on Polygon, supporting trading of WBTC, WETH, and SNX using USDC, USDT, and DAI.

Aelin

Aelin is a decentralized financing protocol built on Ethereum but launched on Optimism, allowing users to publish fundraising needs and corresponding purposes, while other users invest funds to earn returns. Its operating model is somewhat similar to asset management, but due to the high degree of freedom in usage, it may carry greater risks.

ZipSwap

ZipSwap is a native DEX on the Optimistic Rollup layer two network, supporting both Optimism and Arbitrum.

Polynomial Protocol

Polynomial Protocol is a crypto asset management protocol that allows users to deposit sUSD and sETH, with the protocol generating returns through automated strategies.

Cross-Chain Bridges

Currently, almost all mainstream cross-chain bridges support Optimism, including Hop, Synapse, Teleportr, Across, Celer Bridge, Connext, LI.FI, LayerSwap, O3 Swap, Optimism Bridge, Orbiter, Poly Network, Via Protocol, Stargate, etc. I will only introduce a portion of them.

Stargate

Stargate is a stablecoin cross-chain bridge based on the cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero, which saw its TVL exceed $4 billion within three weeks of launch. Its underlying protocol LayerZero secured $135 million in funding led by FTX Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and a16z at the end of March. Additionally, SushiSwap will integrate with Stargate in the future.

LI.FI

LI.FI is a cross-chain DEX aggregator that allows users to convert any asset on one chain to any asset on another chain within its supported chains and asset ranges. The functionality of Via Protocol mentioned above is similar to this, and Via Protocol also announced the completion of $1.2 million in funding at the end of February this year.

LayerSwap

LayerSwap is an application that allows major exchanges, including Coinbase, Binance, Bitfinex, FTX, OKX, Kucoin, Huobi, Crypto.com, Kraken, and Bittrex Global, to reduce fees when withdrawing to Ethereum's layer two network.

High TVL DeFi and Other Track Projects

As a layer two solution for Ethereum, the projects with high TVL in the Optimism ecosystem are generally top applications on the Ethereum mainnet. According to DeFiLlama data, besides the aforementioned projects, the top 20 projects by TVL on Optimism also include DeFi projects like Uniswap, Perpetual Protocol, Curve, AAVE V3, Arrakis Finance, dForce, Hundred Finance, WePiggy, as well as DAO organizations like BoringDAO, CircusDAO, Kratus, Olympus DAO, and XDAO, and the NFT marketplace Quixotic.

Arrakis Finance

Arrakis Finance, formerly known as G-UNI, is a DeFi use case developed by the Ethereum smart contract automation tool Gelato Network, allowing users to view the yield of various liquidity pools on Uniswap and directly add liquidity for mining on Arrakis Finance.

Hundred Finance

Hundred Finance is a multi-chain lending protocol that adopts the ve model, allowing users to stake its native token HND to generate veHND and vote on the distribution of token incentives across multiple chains.