Base Hits $4B TVL: Outpacing Ethereum and Arbitrum

Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base has experienced a significant surge in total value locked (TVL), surpassing $4 billion for the first time. In the past week alone, Base’s TVL has increased by over 13.2%. According to L2BEAT data, the total TVL for Base is now $4.15 billion. This includes $1.45 billion in assets transferred from Ethereum to Base and $2.7 billion in assets natively minted on Base. Base currently ranks as the third largest Ethereum layer 2 platform by TVL, outperforming Blast by approximately $1.4 billion. It trails behind Optimism, which holds the second-place position, and the market leader Arbitrum by $3.5 billion and $14.6 billion, respectively.

While other layer 2 platforms have seen their TVL decrease, Base’s TVL has continued to grow. Starknet experienced the largest loss in TVL at 10.2%, followed by Optimism at 9.1%, Arbitrum at 5.5%, and Blast at 2.4%. This growth in Base’s TVL coincides with a surge in activity on the platform. In the past 30 days, Base has recorded over 50.34 million transactions, surpassing both Arbitrum’s 40.1 million and Ethereum’s 37.9 million. Base’s average daily transactions per second (TPS) increased by 29.7% in the span of one week and currently stands at 35.19 TPS. This is higher than the combined TPS of Arbitrum and Ethereum.

Base has also benefited from the recent popularity of memecoins. The market capitalization of Base’s meme token has surpassed $1.6 billion, marking a 13% increase in just one day. Base’s growing popularity has also attracted scammers, with successful phishing scams increasing by 18-fold between January and March, resulting in a total loss of $3.35 million last month.

While Ethereum has focused on improving its layer-2 transaction processing capabilities, platforms like Base have the potential to capitalize on Ethereum’s limitations. Analysts from VanEck estimate that the scaling ecosystem of layer 2 platforms could reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2030.