Metrics To Be Optimistic About in 2025

Why Metrics Matter

Like any business, the Superchain needs clear success metrics to evaluate performance and guide strategic decisions.

Defining success in crypto is challenging. There’s constant debate over the “best” metric, often because people are optimizing for different goals, values, or timeframes. This disconnect creates confusion and makes it easy for metrics to be misunderstood, or even misleading.

This post offers a perspective on measuring success, which can serve as a shared baseline for the Superchain ecosystem, the Optimism Collective, and the broader Ethereum community to align on and build from.

Choosing The Right Metrics

A metric only matters because of what it is trying to measure. We start from an end goal, and then work backward to find the best way to measure it today. As the world changes, we need to keep asking ourselves: Does this metric still measure the outcome(s) we care about?

For example, active addresses (wallets) may have once been a good proxy for active users on Ethereum. But once people realized they could farm airdrops by creating many real-looking wallets, the metric lost its value, even though the definition didn’t change.

The metrics that matter are the ones that reflect reality.

What is Success for the Superchain?

Success looks different across different industries. A store might focus on sales, a social platform on engagement, and an exchange on trading volume. In each case, the outcome defines which metrics matter. The same is true for blockchain ecosystems.

For the Superchain, we can define success as: “Demand for Superchain blockspace”

Blockspace is the resource that blockchains produce. If the Superchain and its member chains offer the most attractive blockspace in the world (best user experience, best apps, most secure), there should be clear demand and willingness to pay for it.

We’ll start with a few key metrics that focus on:

1. How we measure current demand.
2. Attributes that may drive future demand.

Metrics That Matter

Superchain Metrics Summary Table

Measuring Demand

Transaction Fees Paid

Metric: Real Economic Value (REV)

Definition: The total fees paid to execute a transaction onchain. This includes both the traditional gas fees required for inclusion onchain and additional fees paid to transaction execution services (e.g., Jito, Flashbots, Timeboost).

Calculation: Gas Fees + Out-of-Protocol Tips

Why it matters:

• REV is a topline metric that “measures the monetary demand to transact onchain” (Blockworks).
• It’s used as a proxy for users’ willingness to pay, capturing all transaction fees to better reflect real demand (excludes app-level fees like DEX swap costs).

Revenue

Metric: Estimated Optimism Collective Revenue (Collective Revenue)

Definition: The amount of ETH expected to be earned by the Optimism Collective from revenue sharing.

Calculation: For each chain, take the greater of (a) 2.5% of Chain Revenue or (b) 15% of Net Onchain Profit. OP Mainnet contributes 100% of Net Onchain Profit.

Why it matters:

• This is what the Optimism Collective earns by operating the Superchain, which can be directed by governance to support ecosystem growth.
• See How (and why) the Superchain drives fees to the Optimism Collective (Optimism blog, Aug 2024)

Onchain Signals

Value Onchain

Metric: Total Value Locked (TVL)

Definition: “Value of all coins held in smart contracts of the protocol” (Defillama).

Calculation: The sum of all USD value of assets locked in applications, as reported by DefiLlama.

• TVL can be priced in USD or a crypto asset like ETH, but both are subject to price volatility. USD is often used because it’s easier to interpret and consistent across the broader crypto ecosystem.

Why it Matters: TVL represents the supply side of onchain economic activity for use in protocols such as Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) and lending markets. Strong TVL in the right places may enable greater onchain demand.

How to Measure Growth, Net TVL Flows: Because TVL is influenced by market fluctuations, it can be misleading when trying to measure true growth or user behavior. Net TVL Flows can adjust for this by tracking the net change in token balances, valued at current prices.

Network Usage & Infrastructure

Metric: Gas Used per Second (gas/s)

Definition: “Gas refers to the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on Ethereum” (ethereum.org). Gas Used is tracked as an average rate per second for simplicity.

Why it Matters: Gas, sometimes referred to as blockspace, is the limited resource that blockchains provide. Gas used shows how much of that resource is actually being consumed.

Caution: Gas is only comparable across chains that use Ethereum-equivalent gas units.

User Experience (UX)

Metric: Median Transaction Fee (USD)

Definition: The median gas fee paid to submit a transaction, expressed in USD for simplicity and easier comparison across ecosystems.

Calculation: Median of all transaction fees over a period of time, marked at the USD price at the time of the transaction.

Why it Matters: This metric serves as a proxy for the cost to transact. Lower median fees enable broader usage by reducing friction, lowering breakeven costs, and unlocking use cases that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive.

Comparing to the Market

Market Share

Definition: The Superchain’s share of a market segment for any measure (e.g., L2s, total crypto).

Calculation: Superchain Metric Value / Total Market Metric Value

Why it Matters: Market share helps isolate whether growth is driven by the Superchain itself, or is simply part of a broader market trend. A rising share signals outperformance, while a declining share suggests that other ecosystems are growing faster.

More Metrics To Be Optimistic About

Above are a few core metrics that are easily measurable today. But over time, the industry should push toward metrics that better reflect real performance, ecosystem sustainability, user experience, developer engagement, and the value of high-quality blockspace. The Data Glossary will be updated over time as new metrics emerge and definitions evolve.

Tracking the right metrics is a shared challenge, and opportunity, for the entire Superchain ecosystem.