The Base ecosystem has proven vital progress from 2024 to early 2025. By the top of 2024, it had already leapfrogged Arbitrum in TVL and hasn’t slowed down since. The ecosystem now feels alive, filled with initiatives throughout DeFi, SocialFi, NFTs, AI, and GameFi. What actually fuels this progress is the muscle of Coinbase, with its 100-plus million customers, and the simple fiat on-ramps that pull in each recent capital and on a regular basis customers. Collectively, these items have created the right storm for Base’s breakout second.
The Large Image of An Total Thriving Ecosystem
Kicking off 2025, Base was already flexing some huge numbers, greater than one million every day lively addresses and round 4 million displaying up weekly. To place it in perspective, that’s means forward of rivals. Arbitrum is hovering round 1 / 4 million to 300k. Optimism is barely touching 80k a day. Base isn’t simply preserving tempo; it’s working laps across the competitors. On a month-to-month foundation, Base boasts roughly 24.9 million lively addresses, leaving Arbitrum (4.7 million) and Optimism (1.5 million) far behind. Notably, round 40% of those lively customers are new to Web3, drawn in over the previous yr by memes, airdrops, and social mechanics. This demonstrates Base’s unbelievable effectiveness in onboarding new customers to the crypto house.
Base dominates the Layer 2 scene 🔥
Within the final 30 days, @Base recorded an enormous 24.9M month-to-month lively addresses, leaving #Arbitrum (4.7M) and OP Mainnet (1.5M) far behind.
Take a look at High 10 L2s by Month-to-month Energetic Addresses ⬇️
🥇@base
🥈@arbitrum
🥉@Optimism
🏅@GravityChain… https://t.co/Aq9Tf28awj pic.twitter.com/RBN3bFmNBK— Base Each day (@BaseDailyTK) August 8, 2025
There have been moments when Base outpaced even Ethereum itself on uncooked transaction quantity. On New 12 months’s Day 2025, it cranked out a staggering 13.39 million transactions in simply 24 hours. It’s a flex of how far its scaling has come. The cash facet tells an identical story: by mid-2025, TVL shot as much as round $4.7 billion, placing it forward of Arbitrum’s $3.8 billion and Optimism’s stack. And it’s not nearly money, the builder scene exploded too, with the variety of dApps tripling over the previous yr to greater than 300. Put collectively, the image is obvious: Base is in full-on growth mode, flush with each capital and customers, and laying down the tracks for an ecosystem that simply retains increasing.
Supply: Token Terminal
Due to its EVM compatibility and the OP Stack, the variety of dApps on Base has soared. In response to DeFiLlama, round 323 dApps had been lively on Base by the top of 2024—greater than a threefold improve from the earlier yr. Base additionally constantly ranks within the high three amongst Layer-2s for its variety of core builders. The deployment of sensible contracts has accelerated as nicely, with 1.36 million verified contracts on Base as of July 2025.
The Base Ecosystem
In comparison with Arbitrum (which has over 400 dApps), Base is quickly closing the hole in ecosystem range regardless of being youthful. Moreover, Base has no native token, that means it lacks the token-based incentive applications that Arbitrum and Optimism used to draw customers. That’s what makes Base’s engagement numbers hit even tougher — individuals are really right here to make use of it, not simply to farm the following airdrop.
Supply: Blockworks
Stablecoin exercise backs that up. In simply the primary half of 2024, circulation on Base exploded greater than tenfold, leaping from $319 million to $3.77 billion. An enormous chunk of that’s USDC, which feels proper at dwelling because of native assist from Coinbase and Circle. By the point 2024 wrapped, USDC buying and selling on Base DEXs had already cleared $20 billion in complete quantity, locking it in as one of many important engines of liquidity throughout the entire community.
Supply: DefiLlama
Base’s TVL skilled a breakout surge in late 2024 and 2025. Again in October 2024, Base was sitting at round $2.2 billion in TVL. Quick ahead a number of months, and by mid-2025 it had blown previous Arbitrum to assert the highest Layer-2 spot, touchdown someplace between $4.3 and $4.7 billion. That’s greater than 400% progress in only a yr, whereas Arbitrum’s numbers barely budged. Base now ranks among the many high 6 chains by TVL (together with Layer-1s), demonstrating the immense capital flowing into its DeFi and dApp ecosystem.
Supply: DefiLlama
Base DeFi
The TVL on Base is considerably concentrated, with the DEX Aerodrome accounting for about $0.6 billion. The remainder is distributed throughout lending protocols like Morpho and Aave, yield farms, and NFT staking.
Supply: Base Defi
On the coronary heart of this surge is Aerodrome Finance, which has mainly turn out to be the spine of Base DeFi. Spun up in late 2023 as a fork of Velodrome from Optimism, Aerodrome wasted no time in taking on the liquidity sport. By the top of 2024, it was sitting on a TVL of about $1.68 billion, virtually 40% of all the Base ecosystem at that time.
Supply: DefiLlama
And it’s not simply Aerodrome holding issues down. Buying and selling throughout all Base DEXs is pushing near $2 billion, with Uniswap, Aave, and Morpho all including severe weight. On high of that, Base has constructed out a strong security web of Threat Curators like Gauntlet, B.Protocol Curator, and Block Analitica, giving protocols an additional layer of safety.
In the meantime, the DeFi scene retains spreading into lending and yield aggregation, powered by Coinbase’s fiat rails that make it straightforward for liquidity to move in from extra conventional customers. Aggregators like YO Protocol, Beefy, vfat.io, and Harvest Finance are all working regular. With Base DeFi TVL climbing greater than 400% year-over-year, the pattern is clear: capital isn’t simply displaying up, it’s pouring in, chasing yield and liquidity throughout the community.
SocialFi: A Consumer Explosion Fueled by Farcaster
SocialFi has been the loudest and fastest-growing nook of Base, mixing the pull of social networks with the mechanics of on-chain exercise. On the coronary heart is Farcaster, a decentralized social protocol that has shortly turn out to be the heartbeat of SocialFi on Base.
Early in 2024, Farcaster hit escape velocity by rolling out its flagship app, Warpcast, and airdropping the DEGEN token, which first began as a Base memecoin, to its group. Clearly there’s a mixture of meme tradition and social interplay. It ignited a surge in person numbers, solidifying Farcaster’s management place. Issues went up one other notch when Coinbase itself stepped in.
In July 2025, Coinbase launched the Base App, primarily a rebranded Coinbase Pockets with built-in social instruments. With Farcaster and Zora wired in, customers may put up, mint, and even commerce content material with out leaving the app. That transfer kicked off a recent wave of SocialFi, pulling in not solely crypto natives but additionally mainstream creators and informal customers.
For extra: The Base SocialFi – From Good friend.tech to Farcaster
Supply: Dune
Zora has been one other breakout. Initially centered on NFT minting, Zora went viral on Base in the summertime of 2025 by letting customers tokenize posts and flip them as NFTs. After the Base App launch on July 16, exercise went wild: 7,557 new social tokens in a single day, then 22,098 the very subsequent, and by July 23 Zora was main the entire business with 38,254 tokens minted in simply 24 hours. To place it into perspective, that beat out the mixed token depend of Solana’s largest memecoin launchpads, LetsBonk and Pump.enjoyable.
Supply: Dune
In fact, Base didn’t begin right here. Good friend.tech lit the primary SocialFi hearth again in late 2023, however its hype fizzled as shortly because it got here. Farcaster and Zora, backed by Coinbase, took that momentum and turned it into one thing extra sustainable.
Sport, NFT, and Meme cash
Outdoors of SocialFi, NFTs and gaming on Base are discovering their rhythm too. The Onchain Summer time 2023 marketing campaign planted the seeds, and by 2025 Zora had doubled as each a social hub and a decentralized NFT market, sparking comparisons to Solana’s function in meme and NFT tradition.
Supply: Dune
Large-name NFT video games are additionally becoming a member of in. Parallel, a buying and selling card sport with a robust group, expanded to Base to benefit from low cost charges, onboarding 50,000 gamers and constructing a Discord of over 100,000 members.
For extra: Finest Base Community Gaming and NFT Ecosystem
Supply: Base Gaming
Alongside this, multi-chain platforms like OpenSea and QuikNFT introduced in cross-chain liquidity, whereas deep Coinbase Pockets integration stored onboarding clean for Web2 customers.
Supply: Base NFT
The meme coin side of Base hasn’t slowed both. Since mid-2023, tokens like BALD and Base PEPE have stored new capital flowing in, feeding the “get-rich-quick” narrative that crypto by no means appears to shake. The Base group even spun up a Degen L3 chain to experiment with memecoin-based tipping on Farcaster, displaying simply how intertwined memes and SocialFi have turn out to be.
For extra: Meme Cash on Base: The Case of BRETT, DEGEN, and TOSHI Memecoin
AI and Built-in Intelligence Protocols
After which there’s AI. Base hasn’t missed that wave both. The Virtuals Protocol is main the cost, constructing an economic system round AI brokers that run totally on-chain. These brokers can meet a various array of person wants and necessities.
Supply: Coingecko
The VIRTUAL token went reside on the tail finish of 2024 and wasted no time making noise—by early 2025 it had already blown previous a $4 billion market cap. Virtuals isn’t nearly one token although; it’s shaping a whole economic system constructed round AI brokers that reside and work on-chain. Spin-offs are already popping up. Take AIXBT, for instance—an agent that stalks and scrapes the feeds of 400+ crypto influencers to guess the place the market’s heading. That one alone swelled to a market cap of round $432 million.
This sort of progress solely works as a result of Base retains issues low cost and quick—precisely what AI brokers want after they’re firing off real-time duties on-chain. Coinbase even jumped in with its “Primarily based Brokers” initiative, handing these bots their very own wallets to allow them to really maintain, transfer, and handle crypto themselves. It’s not simply code working within the background anymore; it’s AI with on-chain pores and skin within the sport.
Supply: Base AI
Challenges and Future Outlook
Regardless of its spectacular statistics, Base additionally has to face its challenges. The large query is whether or not person progress can maintain up as soon as the preliminary hype cycles fade. Good friend.tech is a transparent reminder of how shortly pleasure can vanish. There’s additionally the matter of ecosystem stability. The Base ecosystem nonetheless must construct up a robust DeFi basis moderately than pursuing short-term traits comparable to SocialFi. Coinbase’s heavy involvement is each a blessing and a threat—it supplies scale and credibility, but additionally raises considerations about how decentralized Base actually is.
That stated, the larger image is difficult to disregard. Base has already confirmed it will possibly scale its group and its on-chain economic system quicker than virtually anybody anticipated. If the workforce can preserve bettering the infrastructure, together with decentralizing its sequencer, hardening safety, and nurturing a extra balanced ecosystem throughout DeFi, NFTs, and SocialFi, Base is on observe to turn out to be extra than simply one other Layer-2. It may evolve into a completely fledged universe of its personal, filled with customers, capital, and the tech stack to again it up.
Because the begin of 2025, Base has appeared much less like a newcomer and extra like a phenomenon. Explosive progress in customers, transactions, and TVL is extra than simply bragging rights—it’s proof that the community is widening crypto’s attain, pulling in new cash, and stress-testing the bounds of what a Layer-2 can do. Though there are nonetheless obstacles to beat, the inspiration is already established. If momentum continues, Base may stand toe-to-toe with the massive Layer-1s—not simply in numbers, however in cultural and financial weight.
