Base, the famous layer-2 of Ethereum developed by the exchange Coinbase, has been growing steadily since the beginning of 2024 with on-chain metrics increasing significantly: the TVL of the network has just reached the threshold of 8 billion dollars.
These numbers position Base as the second layer-2 of Ethereum in terms of locked value behind the top seed Arbitrum, surpassing the rival Optimism.
Let’s see everything in detail below.
Summary
Base surpasses Optimism for TVL and establishes itself as the second largest layer-2 of Ethereum after Arbitrum
The blockchain of Base, officially entered in mainnet in August 2023, has recorded enormous growth in its TVL to the point of surpassing Optimism and positioning itself in second place behind Arbitrum as the “richest” Ethereum layer-2.
According to the dashboard of L2Beat, in less than a year the network managed by Coinbase has surpassed the threshold of 8 billion in locked value within it (bridge + LP), growing more than 10 times since January 1, 2024.
In detail of the 8.05 billion present on June 10, 2.14 billion represent canonically bridged assets, while 5.92 billion come from natively minted assets.
Incredible numbers if we think that Abitrum took almost 2 years to reach this level of TVL, driven among other things also by an airdrop (token ARB) not used as a marketing strategy by the Base team.
The credit for this remarkable jump in Base’s TVL in recent months is justified by the memecoin mania that has swarmed the decentralized exchanges of layer-2, driving trading activity above expectations.
Coins like BRETT, DEGEN, NORMIE, AERO, TOSHI, BSHIB and others have supported very violent speculations, such as to bring new capital into the blockchain.
Furthermore, it is worth noting how the launch of successful decentralized applications has played a crucial role in all of this, including historic platforms such as Uniswap, Aave, Beefy, Compound, and Sushi, and less dated platforms like Friend.Tech, Aerodrome, Extra Finance, Bunny Swap, Seamless Protocol, and Moonwell.
Finally, it is worth noting how the growth of Base has been supported by the entire panorama of Ethereum layer-2 which in the last year has seen the TVL overall increase from 10.3 billion dollars to the current 45.35 billion dollars.
according to analysts from the asset manager VanEck, the combined value of all Ethereum layer-2s will exceed 1 trillion dollars in market capitalization by 2030.
The explosion of on-chain metrics of Base in 2024: profits soaring
In the midst of the surge in Base’s TVL, other on-chain metrics have also recorded stellar increases, such as the number of processed transactions and the number of new users.
According to the data reported by Dune Analytics, from March onwards the use of the chain in terms of tx has been massive: in just 1 month the number of weekly transactions went from 3.2 million to a peak of 20.4 million.
The activity at the time of writing is still very high, with the last 30 days marking 64.86 million transactions.
In all this, the Base blockchain has also seen a significant increase in the efficiency of its infrastructure beating Arbitrum in terms of TP/s in the last month (30.36 for Base against 23.52 for Arbitrum), although it remains more expensive to use following the Dencun update (data from L2fees).
The increase in operations on the layer-2 Base has been accompanied by a rise in the number of new users landing on the platform.
At the beginning of March, from one week to the next, the number of new users on a weekly basis went from 138,900 to 847,800 units, seeing a multiplier greater than 6X.
Even in this case, the numbers remain high, reaching the ATH in the last week with more than 920,000 new users, and over 2.2 million in the last 30 days.
Source: https://dune.com/watermeloncrypto/base
Obviously, the jump in on-chain activities in recent months has allowed the cryptographic infrastructure to collect juicy fees, cashing in a record figure of 16.9 million dollars in March.
The use of new resources within the blockchain, which has allowed a significant increase in TVL, has enabled Base to self-proclaim as the most profitable layer-2 of 2024 with 38.17 million dollars in inflows.
It is worth noting how the profits on the chain fell by 58.6% in May, after several incidents such as hacks, exploits and phishing scams were observed on the memecoin front, which temporarily led to a lack of confidence among retail investors.
Despite this, in May it turns out to be the L2 that collected the most fees with 6.98 million dollars, surpassing the Optimism network by more than 4 times, which in the same period saw earnings of 1.57 million dollars.
