There's good news on the Ethereum Layer 2 protocols front as the ecosystem is seeing tremendous growth in a short period of time, since its initial deployment. According to L2 tracking and analytics site L2 Beat, the total value locked is nearing the $5 billion mark - it's currently at $4.91 billion or 1,086,197 in ETH terms. It has risen 14.96% over the past week. For reference, the TVL for these protocols was only $1 billion in the mid of Sep - it's almost a 5X growth since then.

However, there is little surprise about the reason for Ethereum Layer 2 protocols' massive popularity. The Ethereum base layer is more congested than ever and is unsuitable for average users. For instance, the measure of how much you would pay for a transaction gwei has routinely hovered around 120-180 for the most time, in the past month and hasn't been under 100 gwei for a while. The rising fees and waiting times appear to be accelerating users' migration to the L2.

When it comes to the scaling solutions, rolls ups take the lead seeing the number of roll-ups based solutions in the top ten. Arbitrum is still at the top with around $2.88 billion locked and with a market share of 58.71%. dYdX follows with around $1 billion in TVL and commanding a 20.48% market share. Optimism holds the number three spot with $485 million TVL and a market share of 9.88%.

The Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions are decentralized protocols that increase the processing capacity of the Ethereum blockchain (scaling) and as a result, relieve congestion on the network. They work by delegating the network processing “off-chain” to their own chain, processing it there, before settling the final balances on the base layer.

These L2 allow users to execute low-cost transactions rapidly. It’s necessary that big exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, etc. integrate them, so average users can benefit from increased throughput and more capacity on blockchains and avoid even the first withdrawal and bridging transactions on-chain.

Arbitrum One publicly deployed it's beta version of the Ethereum L2 scaling solution alongside the Arbitrum bridge onto mainnet on Sep 01. This is a significant attempt to scale the Ethereum blockchain using the roll ups technology and will have long lasting effects on the smart contract platform's future. A lot of users have been recently priced out of the Ethereum blockchain, because of high fees and slow tx times. Arbitrum is attempting to solve that in a decentralized manner, inheriting full security from the Ethereum base layer. Let's see how to use the Arbitrum bridge to migrate funds over to the other side.

1. Visit Arbiscan, scroll down and click Add Arbitrum Network. Authorize via MetaMask.

2. Alternatively, you can manually enter the following information in the Custom RPC addition feature on MetaMask.

• Network Name: Arb1
• RPC: https://arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc
• Chain ID: 42161
• Currency Symbol: ETH
• Block Explorer URL: https://arbiscan.io

1. Access Arbitrum Bridge here.

2. If you MetaMask installed, it will now show you prompt to connect you wallet. If not, please connect it manually by opening MetaMask screen. Then, enter amount of ETH to be sent across the bridge.

3. Click deposit. The system will show the following prompt. Click Proceed.

4. Authorize the tx on your MetaMask wallet.

5. Wait for the transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain. Congratulation! Your funds have been sent over the Arbitrum Bridge. The deposited Ether can be withdrawn from the second box. If you want to deposit Ethereum based tokens, select ERC-20, open Add Token dialog box and enter contract address. You can find them on CoinGecko. Select amount and click deposit. Authorize transaction.

What can you do now with the funds after sending them over the Arbitrum bridge? Check out this list on Arbitrum Portal. You can open any DApp available there, then simply select the Arbitrum Network on your MetaMask and start enjoying the low fees / fast tx times on the Arbitrum L2 Ethereum scaling solution. You can try Uniswap, Sushiswap, Aave, Balancer etc. The product is still under beta, so be careful. All withdrawals take around a week or seven days to be processed and sent back to the base layer.

Arbitrum One is an Ethereum scaling solution, utilizing the roll-ups solutions to super-scale the world’s largest smart contracts blockchain. It’s directly secured by the Ethereum base layer and doesn’t have its own proprietary token. The EVM compatibility is there and Arbitrum supports Ethereum RPC interfaces too. Arbitrum reduces tx cost and speeds up tx processing time. It allows sending funds over to the other side through Arbitrum bridge.