The new Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base by Coinbase, a largest United States-based cryptocurrency exchange, ambitiously sailed into untamed waters as it went live recently. Remarkably, Coinbase, the first publicly traded company to launch a crypto network, already dominates the world crypto stage with a prestigious $20 billion market cap.
Earlier in the year, the introduction of Base was a limited-access venture, welcoming developers for testing and construction. It is currently fully public and supported by over 100 decentralized applications (dApps), demonstrating its fast adoption. Jesse Pollak supervises Base on Coinbase’s behalf and envisions the platform becoming an integral part of the users’ everyday life rather than merely a speculation hub.
The potential revenue stream accompanying Base is quite attractive to Coinbase’s executives. The revenue will not only emanate from the operation of the blockchain but also from the dApps riding on it. To create hype for Base, an “onchain festival” is being thrown by Coinbase, already enjoying support from brands like Coca-Cola. An excess of 100 ETH will be bestowed to Base developers as part of this celebration.
However, this is crypto – lean and mean competition lurks at every corner. For instance, will Base outperform other Layer-2 contemporaries? Surprisingly, Base ranks fifth among layer-2 scaling solutions by total value locked (TVL) at nearly $140 million, according to crypto analytics platform L2Beat.
It’s astonishing to see that despite its recent public launch, this Ethereum L2 blockchain houses crypto worth $140 million locked in its smart contracts. As per L2Beat, Base demonstrated a rapid 65% leap in TVL over the past week, towering over every Ethereum L2 blockchain. However, Arbitrum One, with a whopping $6 billion in TVL, remains the main attraction. Following Arbitrum is Optimism’s OP Mainnet with almost $3 billion in TVL.
zlSync Era and dYdX lag far behind with $429 million and $336 million in TVL respectively. Nevertheless, with Base’s rapid pace, it will likely overtake the laggers soon. Interestingly, Base’s framework utilizes Optimism’s OP Stack code base, implying that as Base flourishes, Optimism’s OP Mainnet and the broader Optimism ecosystem would potentially reap some benefits too.
Source: Cryptonews
