Contango Q2 2024 Brief

During the first quarter of 2024, Arbitrum was the leading chain by volume, achieving a total trading volume of $66 million. Optimism followed as the second highest, with a total trading volume of $26 million, while Ethereum ranked third with $22.5 million.

Similar to the trends observed in open interest (OI) and trading volume, Contango saw an increase in trades and traders in Q2 2024. This growth is a continuation of the strong performance in Q1 2024. Notably, the breakdown of chains by users differs from the OI and volume breakdown. Arbitrum leads in terms of trades and traders, while Ethereum ranks second to last, only ahead of Polygon. This distribution suggests that whales are leveraging Ethereum, whereas smaller traders are operating on L2s where transaction fees are lower.

At the end of the second quarter, Contango had a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $22.5 million, representing a 171% increase QoQ and a 20-fold increase over the previous six months. Ethereum and Arbitrum were once again the leaders in this metric, with TVLs of $14.1 million and $6.1 million, respectively. The combined TVL of the other four chains at the end of Q2 2024 was $2.3 million.

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