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• Starknet is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that uses ZK-rollups to make transactions faster and more scalable. Starknet hit 11.8M transactions in August. On average, 6.83k new users a day joined Starknet in 2023, which is 6.4k a day more than last year. Additionally, $392M has been bridged to Starknet in August, and there has been 3x growth in the average bridged funds inflow to Starknet this year compared with 2022.

• Two recent major upgrades (1, 2) drastically boosted network speed, priming Starknet for growth. Daily transactions per second (TPS) now stand at 8.5. Another growth driver was the launch of community campaigns where 31% (730k) of users participated: Xplorer, Starknet Journey and the DeFi Adventure.

• Zooming in on bridging, while one factor for increased bridged volume to Starknet is overall user growth, another is integration with third-party low fee bridges like LayerSwap and Orbiter. Within less than a year since integration, third-party bridges processed 24% of total bridged volumes on Starknet.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Among the recent Starknet events, the Xplorer campaign heated up the ecosystem. Over 470k users have minted these campaigns' NFTs, which is around 21% of the total Starknet users. The campaign's effectiveness lies in the one-year deadline for minting each quest's NFT after completing it, which encourages users to remain active (mint their NFTs) longer. Although the campaign ended in July, many Xplorer NFTs are still being minted daily.

• zkSync Era, a Layer 2 zkEVM created by Matter Labs to scale Ethereum, has seen a consistent 15% week-over-week growth in DEX volume over the past three months, with $5.5B+ DEX volume to-date. Maverick Protocol (red on image) stands out as the main beneficiary of this uptick. Meanwhile, in the perpetual futures sector, Satori Finance has stormed ahead. In less than a month since its debut on zkSync Era, it's amassed over $600M in notional volume, establishing itself as an early sector leader.

• Speaking of volume, the NFT sector has also seen increased attention of late, primarily due to the experimental NFT project, LIBERTAS OMNIBUS. 118k of the ~180k eligible addresses have minted so far and marketplace’s have seen 450+ ETH in trading volume.

• zkSync Era recently marked two significant data milestones: it processed an all-time high of 434 TPS on July 15th and crossed the 100M successful transactions mark.

• Scroll is an EVM-equivalent ZK-Rollup built on Ethereum and alongside the Ethereum Foundation. Scroll is designed for scaling without sacrificing security or devX/UX. Scroll just launched its Beta Testnet on Sepolia and is coming to mainnet soon. The Beta Testnet has already had 2M transactions and 450K active wallet addresses. More importantly, this results in a sustained average of 4-6 transactions per address; this is a healthy indicator of user engagement if all three metrics continue to increase.

• One of the key upgrades of Scroll's Beta testnet over Alpha is gas efficiency—and while gas prices are generally volatile during launches, there has been consistently lower gas usage (up to a 70% difference) on the Beta testnet's blocks, despite a similar number of transactions processed.

• Beta is even more developer and project-focused than Alpha; the % of txs per day that are smart contract creations has rapidly risen to 10%, which is a good benchmark for dev engagement. Strong future progress would consist of continued growth, high % of verified contracts, and contract deployer diversity.

💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This transaction is an instance of a new EIP-2718 tx type introduced on Beta Testnet, called 'L1MessageTx'. It was created as an element of a significant bridge update that removes dependence on a centralized, trusted message relayer. Now, the L2 sequencer creates this new tx type whenever L1<>L2 messages are queued up, as part of a trustless message relayer protocol. This is highly important for Scroll, as it represents a huge step towards decentralization and decreased reliance on centralized parties.