Original author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Original translation: Marco, ChainCatcher
Growthepie data on August 15 showed that the number of intraday transactions processed by the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem has exceeded 13 million (specifically approximately 13.15 million), and the daily transaction volume has hit a record high. The driving force behind the overall increase in Layer 2 ecosystem transaction data is the Base network.
Since late July, the daily transaction volume of the Base network has soared to a peak of more than 4 million transactions several times. On July 27, the Base network set a record high with 4.432 million daily transactions. In other words, one-third of the transaction volume in the Layer 2 ecosystem now occurs on the Base network.
During the same period, Arbitrum had about 1.8 million daily transactions, Op Mainnet had only 470,000, and Ethereum Mainnet had about 1.1 million daily transactions for most of the year. From this point of view, Base has become the most active blockchain network.
This can be confirmed from Basescan data, the official block explorer of Base, which shows that the daily transaction volume on the Base network has surged by 700% in the past six months.
According to DeFiLlama data, the TVL of the Base network has reached US$6.3 billion, making it the second largest Layer 2 network.
TVL ranks second in the Layer 2 market, and developer activity is second only to Ethereum
August 9th is the first anniversary of the launch of the Base mainnet. The official anniversary NFT was launched for users to collect for free, and about 107,000 NFTs were minted. In the past year, the data growth of the Base network has been remarkable. It has rushed from 0 to the top of the Layer 2 market. The networks total locked value (TVL) has climbed to the second place in the Layer 2 market, and the developer activity has become the second largest public chain network after Ethereum.
In addition to the daily transaction volume of up to 4 million, the cumulative number of addresses on the Base chain has exceeded 100 million. In the past month, the number of new addresses added daily has exceeded 500,000.
Community user @Aliba once lamented that the growth of Base user data is really amazing, increasing by 500,000 a day, and the total number of addresses before Arbitrum airdrop can be increased in less than a week. It should be noted that the number of addresses was less than 2.3 million when Arbitrum airdropped.
In addition to the excellent performance of on-chain user activity data such as daily transaction volume and addresses, the number of crypto assets locked on the Base chain and the number of developer users are also increasing.
According to L2 Beat data on August 19, the TVL of the Base network has reached US$6.3 billion, making it the second largest Layer 2 network. Its market share has risen to 17.2%, ranking second only to Arbitrum (US$14.75 billion).
In the latest Developer Reporter report, the number of developers on the Base network has reached 3,991, an annual increase of 52%. The number of developers is the fastest growing among all blockchain networks.
Currently, the number of developers on the Base network is second only to Ethereum, making it the second largest developer-active network in the entire public chain market.
In terms of revenue, the Base network has been ranked first in the Layer 2 market in terms of monthly revenue since March. In July, the Base networks overall revenue exceeded $3 million, while the overall revenue of the mainstream Layer 2 network was only $6.6 million.
If we use the traditional three dimensions of developers + funds + users to measure the moat of a public chain, the Base network has undoubtedly formed its own ecological barriers.
Base Data Growth Catalyst
Judging from the changing trends of TVL and user activity data, the on-chain data has started to grow explosively since the Base network adopted the new Blob data format upgraded in Cancun in mid-March this year.
First, the reduction of on-chain gas fees released the transaction needs of existing users on the chain. At the same time, the 100-fold increase of DEGEN and other coins on the social platform Farcaster triggered a hype of MEME coins on the chain. The 100-fold benefit effect of new MEME coins such as mfercoin, TYBG (Base Gold), and Brett has spawned new demands one after another. A large number of MEME projects announced their migration to the Base network, attracting traffic looking for MEME Alpha.
In the early days, a large part of the funds on the Base chain were used for speculation around MEME coins. However, as the MEME hype faded in May, the Base chain did not seem to be affected. Instead, it started a new round of growth. All this was thanks to the ecological incentive event Onchain Summer officially launched by Base.
On May 3, Base officially announced that it will launch the annual ecological incentive event Onchain Summer, and provide participating builders, users, etc. with more than 600 ETH prizes, grants and points worth more than US$2 million.
The Onchain Summer event lasts for 3 months (June-August). The first month is mainly for ecological hackathon (Buildation) activities to attract developers, and the next two months are mainly for attracting users and growth.
This is not the first time that Base has held the Onchain Summer event. The first event was launched when the Base network was launched in August last year, which brought popularity and projects to the Base network. The once popular social application Friend Tech exploded during this period.
In order to attract developers, Base will provide 0.25 ETH Gas for free to each registered user of the Coinbase development platform in this hackathon event. It also emphasized that in addition to receiving Base funding, other ecosystem partners such as Optimism will also reward builders during Onchain Summer.
In the hackathon event that ended on June 30, Base said that the event attracted more than 7,500 developers, more than 1,250 projects were submitted, and about 80 projects were awarded. The products covered payment, social, games, creator tools, etc. The number of submitted projects and the number of participants made it the largest on-chain hackathon event ever.
In terms of user incentives, participating in Onchain Summer activities and completing tasks such as minting NFTs can earn points, which can be used to redeem goods such as physical Base peripheral T-shirts, hoodies, etc.
In addition, Coinbase provides all member users with $10 worth of gas fees each month to help users go online. The few cents paid for each transaction on the Base chain is equivalent to each user being able to conduct hundreds of transactions for free.
Inspired by the Onchain Summer ecological event, a large number of developers, funds and users have poured into the Base ecosystem to make money. Currently, there are about 10 days left before the end of the Onchain Summer event. It remains to be seen whether there will be another hit product like Friend Tech.
DeFi protocols are flocking to Base in search of new growth. How can users participate?
On July 10, the second month after the Onchain Summer incentive campaign was launched, Optimism announced the launch of the SuperFest incentive campaign, which will allocate 1.5 million OP tokens specifically for rewarding users who explore DeFi applications on its Superchain, including the Base chain and its ecological projects. Under the dual activity incentives, a large number of high-quality DeFi projects and assets have poured into the Base ecosystem in search of new growth opportunities.
According to Artemis data, over the past year, the proportion of DeFi activities on the Base chain to active addresses has increased from 14% to 28%. Among them, the USDC supply on the Base chain exceeded US$3 billion in June, an increase of more than 1000% in the past 90 days, and on-chain stablecoin transfers increased by 247%.
Currently, 60% of the transaction volume of Uniswap, the largest DEX platform in the entire network, occurs on the Base network. During the same period, the transaction volume contributed by the Ethereum network only accounted for 26%. The transaction volume of Aerodrome, the largest native DEX of the Base chain, ranks among the top six in the DEX track.
In addition to Uniswap, new and old DeFi applications migrated to the Base chain have achieved varying degrees of development.
On August 1, the official of the Euro stablecoin EURC issued by Circle stated on social media that within less than two weeks of its launch on the Base chain, 7.3 million euros of EURC were issued, increasing the total market value of EURC by more than 20%.
Morpho Labs, a lending protocol selected for this OP SuperFest incentive event, has increased its TVL by $125 million since expanding to Base in May.
Lending protocol Radiant Capital said that since its launch on the Base network a week ago, TVL has continued to rise, deposits have increased by US$32 million, borrowings have increased by more than US$22 million, and assets on the Base chain account for about 16% of Radiant’s total TVL.
The contract protocol Synfutures V3 became the number one perp DEX on the Base chain just two weeks after its launch, and achieved a new high of $98 billion in trading volume in the second quarter.
Seeing the potential for user growth, more and more DeFi protocols have begun to expand to the Base chain. For example, the LRT protocol Ion protocol announced on July 29 that it would introduce lending and borrowing of pledged and re-pledged assets into the Base ecosystem; the lending protocol Fluid said it would be launched on Base later this year; the liquid pledge protocol Moonwell launched the Base-based pledge certificate weETH on August 13.
In addition to DeFi protocols, developers are also exploring other new opportunities on the Base chain.
On July 22, B 3 game developer NPC Labs announced the completion of a $21 million pre-seed and seed round of financing led by Pantera Capital. The team aims to increase the adoption of on-chain games through B 3.fun, an expansion platform built on Base.
The entry of a large number of DeFi and developers not only enriches the Base ecosystem, but also provides users with a variety of products and services, increasing choices.
Currently, there are two main ways for users to participate in the Base chain ecosystem. One is to participate in the Onchain Summer event, mint event NFTs or complete specific tasks to earn on-chain point certificates and compete for future ecological project airdrops; the other is to participate in projects incentivized by the Op SuperFest event to earn additional OP reward income, etc.
