The Base network has witnessed remarkable expansion from 2024 into the beginning of 2025. Outperforming Arbitrum in terms of Total Value Locked (TVL) by the close of 2024, its momentum has only increased. The platform is now a vibrant hub, teeming with diverse projects spanning decentralized finance (DeFi), social finance (SocialFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence (AI), and GameFi sectors. A key driver of this surge is the power of Coinbase, boasting over 100 million users, coupled with user-friendly fiat on-ramps that attract both new funds and everyday consumers. These factors have aligned perfectly, creating a pivotal moment for Base’s rise.
The Big Picture: A Flourishing Ecosystem
As 2025 began, Base showcased impressive statistics, with over a million active daily addresses and approximately four million weekly users. This performance significantly surpasses its competitors. While Arbitrum records around 250,000 to 300,000, and Optimism struggles to reach 80,000 daily, Base isn’t just keeping up; it’s outpacing them. On a monthly scale, Base proudly reports around 24.9 million active addresses, significantly exceeding Arbitrum (4.7 million) and Optimism (1.5 million) . What’s noteworthy is that approximately 40% of these active users are newcomers to Web3, attracted in the past year through memes, airdrops, and engaging social mechanics. This underscores Base’s exceptional ability to onboard individuals into the cryptocurrency world.
Base dominates the Layer 2 scene 🔥
In the last 30 days, @Base recorded a massive 24.9M monthly active addresses, leaving #Arbitrum (4.7M) and OP Mainnet (1.5M) far behind.
Check out Top 10 L2s by Monthly Active Addresses ⬇️
🥇@base
🥈@arbitrum
🥉@Optimism
🏅@GravityChain… https://t.co/Aq9Tf28awj pic.twitter.com/RBN3bFmNBK— Base Daily (@BaseDailyTK) August 8, 2025
At certain points, Base has even exceeded Ethereum in raw transaction volume. On New Year’s Day 2025, it processed an astounding 13.39 million transactions within 24 hours, a demonstration of its advanced scaling capabilities. Financial data paints a similar picture: by mid-2025, TVL soared to approximately $4.7 billion, surpassing Arbitrum’s $3.8 billion and Optimism’s figures. Beyond just financial metrics, the developer community has also flourished, with the number of decentralized applications (dApps) tripling in the past year to over 300. Overall, the trend is clear: Base is experiencing a period of rapid growth, abundant with both capital and users, establishing itself as an expanding and vital ecosystem.
Source: Token Terminal
Thanks to its EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatibility and the OP Stack, Base has seen a surge in dApps. According to DeFiLlama, by the conclusion of 2024, roughly 323 dApps were actively running on Base, more than tripling the previous year’s number. Furthermore, Base consistently ranks among the top three Layer-2 solutions regarding its core developer count. The deployment of smart contracts has also accelerated, with 1.36 million verified contracts present on Base as of July 2025.
The Base Ecosystem
Despite being a newer platform, Base is rapidly reducing the gap in ecosystem diversity compared to Arbitrum (which hosts over 400 dApps). Moreover, Base doesn’t have a native token, indicating it lacks the token-based incentive structures that Arbitrum and Optimism utilized to attract users. This makes Base’s engagement figures even more impressive, indicating that people are genuinely using the platform and not simply participating for airdrop opportunities.
Source: Blockworks
Stablecoin activity reinforces this observation. In the first half of 2024 alone, stablecoin circulation on Base exploded more than tenfold, escalating from $319 million to $3.77 billion. Much of this activity is driven by USDC, which benefits from native integration with Coinbase and Circle. By the end of 2024, USDC trading volume on Base DEXs had exceeded $20 billion, cementing its role as a key source of liquidity throughout the network.
Source: DefiLlama
Base’s TVL experienced significant growth in late 2024 and 2025. In October 2024, Base’s TVL stood at around $2.2 billion. However, by mid-2025, it had surpassed Arbitrum, achieving the top Layer-2 position with a TVL between $4.3 and $4.7 billion. This signifies a growth exceeding 400% in just a year, while Arbitrum’s numbers remained relatively stable. Base now ranks among the top 6 chains by TVL (including Layer-1 networks), reflecting the substantial capital flowing into its DeFi and dApp ecosystem.
Source: DefiLlama
Base DeFi
The TVL on Base shows some concentration, with Aerodrome DEX accounting for around $0.6 billion. Remaining TVL is distributed amongst lending platforms like Morpho and Aave, yield farms, and NFT staking.
Source: Base Defi
Central to this surge is Aerodrome Finance, which has essentially evolved into the foundation of Base DeFi. Established in late 2023 as a derivative of Velodrome from Optimism, Aerodrome rapidly dominated the liquidity landscape. By the conclusion of 2024, its TVL reached approximately $1.68 billion, representing close to 40% of the entire Base ecosystem.
Source: DefiLlama
Furthermore, DEX trading volume across all Base-based exchanges is approaching $2 billion, with Uniswap, Aave, and Morpho significantly contributing. In addition, Base has implemented a robust safety framework utilizing Risk Curators such as Gauntlet, B.Protocol Curator, and Block Analitica, providing protocols with enhanced security.
Simultaneously, the DeFi ecosystem is expanding into lending and yield aggregation, leveraging Coinbase’s fiat on-ramps to facilitate easier liquidity inflow from traditional users. Aggregators like YO Protocol, Beefy, vfat.io, and Harvest Finance are performing consistently. As Base DeFi TVL increases more than 400% year-over-year, the trend is undeniable: capital is not simply appearing but flowing rapidly in search of yield and liquidity across the network.
SocialFi: User Growth Fueled by Farcaster
SocialFi has surfaced as the most active and rapidly expanding sector within Base, merging the appeal of social platforms with on-chain interactions. The core of this ecosystem is Farcaster, a decentralized social protocol that has swiftly become the central hub for SocialFi on Base.
Starting in 2024, Farcaster witnessed rapid adoption by launching its primary application, Warpcast, and distributing DEGEN tokens, initially a Base memecoin, to its user base. This fusion of meme culture and social engagement spurred significant user growth, cementing Farcaster’s leading position. Coinbase’s intervention further accelerated this growth.
In July 2025, Coinbase introduced the Base App, a redesigned Coinbase Wallet integrated with social features. Featuring Farcaster and Zora integration, users could post, create, and trade content seamlessly within the application. This initiative initiated a fresh surge in SocialFi activity, attracting both crypto-native individuals and mainstream creators and casual users.
Source: Dune
Another standout has been Zora. Primarily focused on NFT minting, Zora became highly popular on Base during the summer of 2025 by enabling users to tokenize their posts and trade them as NFTs. Following the launch of the Base App on July 16, activity surged, with 7,557 new social tokens created in a single day, followed by 22,098 the next. By July 23, Zora led the industry with 38,254 tokens minted in 24 hours, exceeding the combined token count of Solana’s largest memecoin launchpads, LetsBonk and Pump.fun.
Source: Dune
Base’s journey began with Friend.tech, which ignited the initial SocialFi spark in late 2023, though its popularity rapidly diminished. Farcaster and Zora, backed by Coinbase, successfully harnessed and transformed this momentum into a more sustainable trend.
Game, NFT, and Meme coins
Beyond SocialFi, NFTs and gaming on Base are progressively gaining traction. The Onchain Summer 2023 campaign laid the foundation, and by 2025, Zora had evolved into both a social platform and a decentralized NFT marketplace, drawing comparisons to Solana’s impact on meme and NFT culture.
Source: Dune
Prominent NFT games are also joining in. Parallel, a trading card game with a robust community, expanded to Base to take advantage of its low fees, onboarding 50,000 players and cultivating a Discord community of over 100,000 members.
Source: Base Gaming
Multi-chain platforms like OpenSea and QuikNFT have also contributed by enabling cross-chain liquidity, while deep Coinbase Wallet integration makes the onboarding process for Web2 users seamless.
Source: Base NFT
The meme coin sector on Base hasn’t slowed down either. Since mid-2023, coins such as BALD and Base PEPE have continually drawn new capital, driving the “get-rich-quick” narrative that is often associated with crypto. The Base community even established a Degen L3 chain to explore memecoin-based tipping on Farcaster, showing how intertwined memes and SocialFi have become.
For more: Meme Coins on Base: The Case of BRETT, DEGEN, and TOSHI Memecoin
AI and Integrated Intelligence Protocols
Additionally, Base has embraced the AI trend. The Virtuals Protocol is at the forefront, creating an ecosystem around AI agents that operate entirely on-chain. These agents address a diverse spectrum of user needs and requirements.
Share.