Base Surpasses Optimism for TVL and Establishes Itself as the Second Largest Layer-2 of Ethereum After Arbitrum

The blockchain of Base, officially entered in mainnet in August 2023, has recorded enormous growth in its TVL to the point of surpassing Optimism and positioning itself in second place behind Arbitrum as the “richest” Ethereum layer-2.

Base (CRYPTO: BASE), the layer-2 blockchain developed by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), has seen impressive growth in 2024.

According to L2Beat, Base is now the second-largest Ethereum layer-2 in terms of total value locked (TVL) behind Arbitrum, and has surpassed Optimism.

As of June 10, Base has over $8.05 billion in TVL (bridge + LP), with $2.14 billion in canonically bridged assets and $5.92 billion in natively minted assets.

This growth is significant considering that Arbitrum took almost two years to reach a similar TVL level, and Base has achieved this without using an airdrop (token ARB) as a marketing strategy.

The memecoin mania on layer-2 decentralized exchanges has played a role in boosting Base's TVL, with coins like BRETT, DEGEN, NORMIE, AERO, TOSHI, BSHIB, among others, attracting speculation and bringing capital into the blockchain.

Additionally, the launch of several decentralized applications (dApps) has contributed to the chain's usage, including Uniswap, Aave, Beefy, Compound, Sushi, Friend.Tech, Aerodrome, Extra Finance, Bunny Swap, Seamless Protocol, and Moonwell.

Overall, Ethereum layer-2s have seen significant growth in the past year, with the combined TVL increasing from $10.3 billion to $45.35 billion.

According to VanEck, the combined value of all Ethereum layer-2s is expected to exceed $1 trillion in market capitalization by 2030.

Other on-chain metrics for Base have also seen strong increases, including the number of transactions processed and new users joining the chain.

According to Dune Analytics, chain usage in terms of transactions has been massive since March, with the number of weekly transactions rising from 3.2 million to a peak of 20.4 million in just one month.

At the time of writing, activity remains high, with 64.86 million transactions recorded in the last 30 days.

Base has also seen an increase in efficiency, surpassing Arbitrum in terms of transactions per second (TP/s) in the last month (30.36 for Base vs. 23.52 for Arbitrum).

However, following the Dencun update, Base remains more expensive to use (data from L2fees).

The increase in activity on Base has been accompanied by a rise in new users joining the platform.

At the beginning of March, the number of new weekly users increased from 138,900 to 847,800, showing a multiplier of over 6X.

Even now, the numbers remain high, reaching an all-time high (ATH) in the last week with over 920,000 new users, and over 2.2 million in the last 30 days.

As a result of the surge in on-chain activities in recent months, the cryptographic infrastructure has collected substantial fees, cashing in a record amount of $16.9 million in March.

The utilization of new resources within the blockchain has led Base to self-proclaim as the most profitable layer-2 of 2024, with $38.17 million in inflows.

It's worth noting that chain profits fell by 58.6% in May, following several incidents such as hacks, exploits, and phishing scams observed on the memecoin front, which led to a temporary lack of confidence among retail investors.

Despite this, Base emerged as the L2 that collected the most fees in May ($6.98 million), surpassing the Optimism network by more than four times (earnings of $1.57 million).