The developer activity is second only to Ethereum. Why is the data on the Base chain growing explosively?
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.
Original title: "The number of developers is second only to Ethereum, and Base has become a new traffic battleground for DeFi protocols"
Original author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Growthepie data on August 15 showed that the number of intraday transactions processed by the Ethereum Layer2 ecosystem has exceeded 13 million (specifically about 13.15 million), and the daily transaction volume has set a record high. However, the driving force behind the overall increase in Layer2 ecological 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 several times. Among them, on July 27, the Base network set a record high with 4.432 million intraday transactions. In other words, one-third of the transaction volume in the Layer2 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's daily transaction volume remained at around 1.1 million for most of this year. From this point of view, Base has become the most active block network.
This can be confirmed by the data of Basescan, the official block browser of Base. In the past six months, the daily transaction volume on the Base network has surged by 700%.
According to DeFiLlama data, the TVL of the Base network has reached 6.3 billion US dollars, which has jumped to the second largest Layer2 network.
TVL ranks second in the Layer2 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 Layer2 market. The network's total locked value (TVL) has climbed to the second place in the Layer2 market, and the developer activity has become the second largest public chain network after Ethereum.
In addition to the daily transaction volume of 4 million, the cumulative number of addresses on the Base chain has exceeded 100 million. In the past month, the number of new addresses per day has exceeded 500,000.
Community user @Aliba once lamented that the growth of Base user data is really amazing, with an increase of 500,000 a day, and the total number of addresses before the Arbitrum airdrop in less than a week. It should be noted that the number of addresses during the Arbitrum airdrop was less than 2.3 million.
In addition to the excellent performance of on-chain user activity data such as daily transaction volume and addresses, the number of locked crypto assets and developer users on the Base chain are increasing.
According to L2Beat data on August 19, the TVL of the Base network has reached 6.3 billion US dollars, and it has long become the second largest Layer2 network, with a market share of 17.2%, ranking second only to Arbitrum (US$14.75 billion).
In the latest Developer Reporter developer report, the number of developers on the Base network has reached 3,991, an annual increase of 52%, and 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, since March, the Base network has ranked first in the Layer2 market in terms of monthly revenue captured. In July, the Base network's overall revenue exceeded US$3 million, while the overall revenue of the mainstream Layer2 network was only US$6.6 million.
If the traditional "developers + funds + users" three dimensions are used to measure the moat of a public chain, the Base network has undoubtedly formed its own ecological barrier.
Base data growth catalyst
From the trend of TVL and user activity data changes, the Base network has started to grow explosively since it adopted the new Blob data format of Cancun upgrade 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 hyped around the MEME coin. 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 thanks to the ecological incentive event Onchain Summer launched by Base.
On May 3, Base officially announced that it would launch the annual ecological incentive event Onchain Summer, and provide more than 600 ETH prizes, grants and points worth more than 2 million US dollars to participating builders, users, etc.
The Onchain Summer event lasted for 3 months (June-August). Among them, the first month was mainly an ecological hackathon (Buildation) event to attract developers, and the next two months were mainly to attract users and grow.
This is not the first time that Base has held an Onchain Summer event. The first event was launched when the Base network was launched in August last year, bringing popularity and projects to the Base network. The once popular social application Friend Tech broke out during this period.
In order to attract developers, Base will provide 0.25ETH 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, submitted more than 1,250 projects, and won about 80 projects. The products covered payment, social, games, creator tools, etc. The number of submitted projects and the number of participants were the largest on-chain hackathon events 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 will provide all member users with $10 worth of gas fees each month to help users get on the chain. 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 activities, a large number of developers, funds and users have poured into the Base ecosystem to dig for gold. At present, there are about 10 days left before the end of the Onchain Summer activities. Whether there will be a hit product like Friend Tech is still worth looking forward to.
DeFi protocols have poured into Base to find new growth. How can users participate?
On July 10, the second month after the Onchain Summer incentive activity was launched, Optimism announced the launch of the SuperFest incentive activity, which will allocate 1.5 million OP tokens specifically for rewarding users who explore DeFi applications on its Superchain, and the Base chain and its ecological projects are included. Under the dual activity incentives, a large number of high-quality DeFi projects and assets have poured into the Base ecosystem to find new growth opportunities.
According to Artemis data, in the past year, the proportion of DeFi activities on the Base chain to active addresses has increased from 14% to 28%. Among them, the supply of USDC on the Base chain exceeded 3 billion US dollars in June, an increase of more than 1000% in the past 90 days, and the transfer of stablecoins on the chain 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 that have migrated to the Base chain have achieved varying degrees of development.
On August 1, Circle’s official Euro stablecoin EURC said 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.
Radiant Capital, a lending protocol, said that since its launch on the Base network a week ago, TVL has continued to rise, deposits have increased by $32 million, borrowings have increased by more than $22 million, and assets on the Base chain account for about 16% of Radiant’s total TVL.
Contract protocol Synfutures V3 became the top perp DEX on the Base chain within two weeks of its launch, and hit a record high of $98 billion in trading volume in the second quarter.
It is precisely because of the potential for user growth that more and more DeFi protocols have begun to expand to the Base chain, such as the LRT protocol Ion protocol, which announced on July 29 that it would introduce lending and borrowing of pledged and re-pledged assets to 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, B3 game developer NPC Labs announced the completion of a $21 million pre-seed and seed round led by Pantera Capital. The team aims to increase the adoption of on-chain games through B3.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 their 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 fight 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.
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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