Base's 2025 performance: Revenue increased by 30 times, solidifying its position as a leading compa

In 2025, the competition in the Layer2 ecosystem has entered a crucial stage, focusing on increasing revenue and user retention. Base has achieved remarkable results. With the increase in activity on the chain, as well as the explosive growth of stablecoins and consumer applications, Base’s annual protocol revenue increased by approximately 30 times. Transaction volumes and active addresses continue to reach new highs. Base has successfully implemented a model where real usage is rewarded with real income among all L2 ecosystems. Leveraging Coinbase’s compliance and traffic advantages, Base is transitioning from being just a traffic hub to a legitimate settlement infrastructure, further solidifying its leading position in the Ethereum Layer2 market.

In 2025, Base further strengthened its leading position as the leader in the Ethereum Layer2 ecosystem. Revenue is one of the key indicators that demonstrate its dominance within the entire L2 ecosystem.

Although the total revenue of L2 ecosystems declined significantly from their peak in 2024, Base still maintains a dominant position in the L2 market. In December 2023, Base’s on-chain revenue was $2.5 million, accounting for only 5% of the L2’s total revenue of $53.7 million. A year later, Base’s on-chain revenue increased to $14.7 million, making up 63% of the L2’s total revenue of $23.5 million in December 2024. This trend continued into 2025, with Base achieving $75.4 million in revenue by the end of the year, accounting for 62% of the L2’s total revenue of $119.7 million.

Base’s leadership isn’t limited to revenue alone; its DeFi TVL also makes it a leader in the L2 ecosystem. In January 2025, after surpassing Arbitrum One, Base now accounts for 46.3 billion dollars in DeFi TVL, representing 46% of the entire L2 market. Importantly, Base’s DeFi TVL continued to grow throughout 2025, rising steadily from 33% at the beginning of the year to the current level.

The greatest advantage of Base compared to other L2 solutions lies in its distribution channels. This advantage is undeniable. According to Coinbase’s latest 10-Q filing, Base has 9.3 million monthly active users during the third quarter. This allows Base to reach a large and engaged user base, something that other L2 networks cannot achieve. While most L2 networks must rely on incentives or third-party integrations to attract users, Base benefits from its direct connection to the largest centralized exchange in the United States, giving it a natural advantage in distribution.

Base also stands out due to the scalable development of applications within its ecosystem and the actual value they create. Since the beginning of this year, applications within the Base ecosystem have generated $369.9 million in revenue. It’s worth noting that most of this revenue comes from Aerodrome, which accounted for $160.5 million, or 43% of total application revenue. However, leading DEXs on Base aren’t the only successful applications in 2025.

The AI agent platform Virtuals has generated $43.2 million in revenue, accounting for 12% of the total revenue from Base’s applications. The recently launched sports prediction application Football.Fun has also generated $4.7 million in revenue. These figures indicate that Base has developed a portfolio of income-generating products across various fields, and the ecosystem’s vitality isn’t dependent on a single application or use case.

这种分销优势，在Coinbase与Morpho的合作案例中得到了最佳体现。这项合作允许Coinbase用户直接在平台上以加密资产作为抵押借入USDC。虽然用户体验内嵌于Coinbase网站，但抵押品管理和贷款执行均通过Morpho在Base上的部署在链上完成。这个借贷产品推出不到一年，但采用率已相当之高。

Coinbase用户已通过Morpho申请了8.663亿美元贷款，目前占Morpho在Base网络上活跃贷款的90%。同期，Morpho在Base链的TVL年内增长1906%，从4820万美元攀升至9.664亿美元。Base的分销优势意味着，链上活动可以成为Coinbase产品使用的副产品。这种用户导入渠道是其他L2网络所不具备的，导致它们主要依赖激励计划来为DeFi生态吸引流动性和用户。

尽管2025年以来Base链的DeFi TVL持续增长，且链上收入保持稳定，但用户链上行为已开始发生变化。根据日均过滤用户数统计(指单日内在特定合约进行至少两笔交易且消耗超过0.0001单位燃料费的独立地址)，USDC现已成为Base链上使用最广泛的应用，11月该应用日均用户数达83400人，较去年同期的25100人同比增长233%。

At the same time, interactions between individual investors and decentralized exchange platforms have significantly decreased. The daily number of users filtered through Uniswap and Aerodrome dropped by 74% and 49%, respectively. What’s more notable is that trading volume on Base-chain decentralized exchanges reached record highs in 2025. This indicates that activities on Uniswap and Aerodrome are increasingly concentrated among traders with larger capital amounts and higher transaction volumes.

Base’s key strategies for 2026: The Base App

Base benefits from Coinbase’s natural advantages, offering advantages that other chains cannot match. It has established a solid foundation in terms of user base, liquidity, and application ecosystem. Base leads in revenue within the L2 network, possessing the deepest DeFi TVL in this field, and continues to receive user traffic from Coinbase’s blockchain. In other words, while most L2 networks still struggle to establish themselves or attract users, Base has already surpassed this stage of development.

With this advantage, Base has shifted its focus beyond core L2 network metrics to the creator economy. If Base can seize this market opportunity, the potential market size could reach nearly $500 billion. To capture this market, Base’s core strategy focuses on the Base App. This “superapp” aims to integrate asset management, trading, social features, and wallet functions into one platform. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Base App includes several innovative features that go beyond basic asset management:

● Social messaging capabilities based on Farcaster and Zora;

● Direct messaging and group chat functionality via XMTP (support for interaction with other users and AI agents like Bankr);

● The Base App comes with a built-in feature for discovering various mini-applications. Users can directly access and use these mini-applications within the Base App.

The Base App launched its internal beta version in July, and initially, it was available only to users who had been invited through a whitelist. Nevertheless, the Base App has seen significant growth. A total of 148,000 users have created accounts on the app, and the number of new registrations increased significantly in November, with a month-over-month increase of 93%. The user retention rate is also strong: there are now 6,300 active users per week (a 74% increase from previous weeks), and 10,500 active users per month (a 7% increase from previous months). Although it hasn’t been officially confirmed, it’s likely that the Base App will complete its internal testing phase by the end of this month, paving the way for full public availability before the New Year.

The main goal of the blockchain-based economy that Base is working on is to allow creators to earn money directly from their creations. Content created within the Base App will be tokenized by default (although users can opt out of this feature), turning each post into a tradable asset. Creators can earn a share of the transaction fees generated by their content, at a rate of 1% per transaction.

Looking ahead, users will also be able to issue creator tokens directly from their accounts within the Base App, providing another way to monetize their content (this feature is currently in the early testing stage). At the technical level, both creator tokens and content tokens are tokenized using the Zora protocol. So far, creators have earned a total of $6.1 million through the Zora tokenization model, with an average monthly payment of $1.1 million since July.

As of now, the total number of tokens issued for creators and content on Zora has exceeded 6.52 million. Among these, 6.45 million tokens (approximately 99% of the total) have not been traded at all. Only 1.78 thousand tokens (0.3% of the total) remain actively traded after 48 hours since their issuance. Before analyzing these data, it’s important to understand one basic fact: most content posted on the internet essentially has no value. From this perspective, the fact that 99% of the tokens failed to attract market attention may simply reflect the natural distribution of online content, rather than any structural flaws in the Base model. What really matters are those tokens that have remained active for more than 48 hours. We believe that the fact that creators’ or content-related tokens can continue to be traded after 48 hours indicates that they possess real value. In other words, Base has barely made any impact in the field of creator economies so far. Only 1.78 thousand tokens show continuous activity, which is a mere fraction compared to the vast amount of content produced daily. Pessimists might think this model isn’t feasible at all, but optimists believe that although Base’s penetration into the creator economy is practically zero, there is still significant room for growth if improvements can be made in areas such as content distribution, discovery, and tooling. Regardless, increasing the number of tokens that can remain active for more than 48 hours should be Base’s main focus in 2026.

最后，Base或许还拥有加密市场最有效的激励机制：代币。今年9月，Base确认正在探索发行代币，但还没有公布有关分配方式、实用功能或可能上线日期的具体细节。Base代币最引人注目的不是代币本身，而是应用场景。与大多数L2不同，Base不需要依靠代币吸引流动性。相反，它可以用代币激励链上创作者的参与，奖励那些能够带来用户参与度、内容创作和社交活动的行为，而不是短期交易行为。

综上所述，凭借已建立的L2核心生态，Base正在利用分销渠道、产品覆盖度和潜在的代币激励，向前推进，探索面向消费者和创作者的应用案例。如果这一策略成功，Base将围绕社交和创作者生态构建起一道护城河。这道护城河比DeFi TVL、稳定币余额更具用户黏性，而其他L2目前还没上桌。