Base, built and launched in February 2023 by Coinbase, now stands in second place on the industry leader board by L2Beat, with an 18% market share of the total 74 active layer-2 networks. Base is preceded by Arbitrum One and followed by OP Mainnet.
All three Layer-2 projects run on Optimistic rollups. These networks are designed to carry out transactions outside the underlying network, the Ethereum blockchain in this case. This is why using a rollup such as Optimism can help reduce cost and time by clubbing together transactions and settling them all at once, on the main blockchain.
While Base’s achievement of coming under the top 5 layer-2 blockchain solutions is commendable, the real weightage of this position is still murky. How Base would be able to sustain this position is a crucial question but as of September 9, Base has the highest transaction count of 4.37M.
Source: growthepie
While reporters have pointed out that the rapid rise of Base might be linked to Coinbase’s marketing efforts and promotions is a valid concern, it fails to acknowledge the organic growth in the data. Base saw 119.7 million transactions in the last 30 days, which would be difficult for beta testers or opportunistic crypto influencers to attribute.
While marketing efforts are not uncommon in the crypto-sphere, the high transaction counts that Base has sustained over the past year are proof of its growing fandom. Moreover, the data displayed counts only user-based volume with smart contract transactions and not system-based ones.
As of September 9th, Base’s TVL is $6.01 billion, with 73.20% of the value coming from native assets, while the rest is canonical (external). Despite the L2’s entry in 2023, the TVL helps support the high user activity on the chain. This successfully brings up the fact that the numbers reflect genuine user interaction with the Base ecosystem.
Further, the hikes in the transaction volume can most likely be attributed to the general trend towards L2 solutions, which leverages Ethereum’s smooth scalability issues and cheaper transaction costs.
Therefore, while naysayers raise a valid issue digging into the sustainability of the Base blockchain, going by the data, Base seems to have steady user-driven growth rather than just marketing efforts alone. Needless to say, the wrangling between product and marketing has always existed, but Base has proven that tech-based marketing is always the way to go!