Original Title: Are you Based? Base’s Outlook for 2026
Original Author: AJC, Messari
Original Translation: Tim, PANews
In 2025, Base further solidified its position as the leading Ethereum L2 across numerous data metrics. Among these, revenue is the most indicative metric showcasing its dominance within the entire L2 ecosystem.
Although total L2 revenue has significantly declined from its 2024 peak, Base continues to dominate the L2 market. In December 2023, Base’s on-chain revenue was $2.5 million, accounting for only 5% of the total L2 revenue of $53.7 million. A year later, Base’s on-chain revenue grew to $14.7 million, representing 63% of the total L2 revenue of $23.5 million in December 2024. This trend continued into 2025, with Base generating $75.4 million in revenue year-to-date, constituting 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.
Base’s leading edge is not only reflected in revenue; its DeFi TVL has also become the frontrunner in the L2 space. After surpassing Arbitrum One in January 2025, Base currently holds a DeFi TVL of $4.63 billion, accounting for 46% of the entire L2 market. Crucially, Base’s share of DeFi TVL has been steadily increasing throughout 2025, rising from 33% at the beginning of the year to its current level.
Base’s greatest advantage over other L2 solutions lies in its distribution channels, the importance of which cannot be overstated. According to Coinbase’s latest 10-Q filing, it had 9.3 million monthly active trading users in the third quarter, enabling Base to directly access a large and already onboarded user base—a feat difficult for other L2 networks to achieve. While most L2s must rely on incentives or third-party integrations to attract users, Base enjoys a natural distribution advantage due to its direct connection with the largest centralized exchange in the United States.
Base also stands out due to the scaled development and actual value creation of applications within its ecosystem. This year, applications in the Base ecosystem have generated $369.9 million in revenue. Notably, application revenue is heavily concentrated in Aerodrome, which contributed $160.5 million, accounting for 43% of total application revenue. However, the leading DEX on Base is not the only application that succeeded in 2025.
The AI agent launch platform Virtuals has generated $43.2 million in revenue, representing 12% of the total application revenue in the Base ecosystem; meanwhile, the recently launched sports prediction application Football.Fun has produced $4.7 million in revenue. These figures indicate that Base has formed a portfolio of revenue-generating products across multiple domains, with ecosystem activity not relying on a single application or use case.
This distribution advantage is best exemplified in the collaboration case between Coinbase and Morpho. This partnership allows Coinbase users to directly borrow USDC on the platform using crypto assets as collateral. Although the user experience is embedded within the Coinbase website, collateral management and loan execution are completed on-chain through Morpho’s deployment on Base. This lending product was launched less than a year ago but has already achieved significant adoption.
Coinbase users have applied for $866.3 million in loans through Morpho, currently accounting for 90% of Morpho’s active loans on the Base network. During the same period, Morpho’s TVL on the Base chain increased by 1906% year-to-date, rising from $48.2 million to $966.4 million. Base’s distribution advantage means that on-chain activity can become a byproduct of Coinbase product usage. This user onboarding channel is unavailable to other L2 networks, causing them to primarily rely on incentive programs to attract liquidity and users to their DeFi ecosystems.
Although Base chain’s DeFi TVL has continued to grow and on-chain revenue has remained stable since 2025, user on-chain behavior has begun to change. According to daily filtered user statistics (referring to unique addresses that conducted at least two transactions on a specific contract in a single day and consumed over 0.0001 units of gas fee), USDC has now become the most widely used application on the Base chain. In November, this application had an average of 83,400 daily users, a 233% year-over-year increase from 25,100 users in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, retail interaction with DEXs has significantly decreased. The daily filtered user counts for Uniswap and Aerodrome have dropped by 74% and 49%, respectively. However, more notably, Base chain DEX trading volume reached an all-time high in 2025, meaning that activity on Uniswap and Aerodrome is increasingly concentrated among traders with larger capital and higher transaction volumes.
Base’s Key Focus for 2026: Base App
Base’s inherent advantage, backed by Coinbase, is a luxury condition that other chains find difficult to match. It has already established a solid moat in terms of user base, liquidity, and application ecosystem. Base leads in revenue among L2 networks, possesses the deepest DeFi TVL in the field, and continuously receives on-chain user traffic from Coinbase. In other words, unlike most L2 networks still struggling to establish a foothold or attract users, Base has long surpassed this developmental stage.
With this moat, Base’s vision extends beyond core L2 network metrics and into the creator economy. If this market opportunity can be captured, the potential total market size is estimated to be close to $500 billion. To seize this market direction, Base’s core strategy focuses on the Base App. This “super app” aims to integrate asset custody, trading, social, and core wallet functionalities into a single platform. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Base App is equipped with several innovative features that go beyond basic asset management:
· Social feed based on Farcaster and Zora;
· Direct messaging and group chat functionality via XMTP (supporting interactions with other users and AI agents like Bankr);
· Built-in mini-app discovery, allowing users to directly access and use various mini-apps within the Base App.
The Base App launched an internal beta in July, initially available only to users invited via a whitelist. Despite this, the Base App achieved significant growth. A total of 148,400 users have created accounts, with registrations accelerating in November, showing a 93% month-over-month increase. User retention also performed strongly, with weekly active users reaching 6,300 (a 74% month-over-month increase) and monthly active users reaching 10,500 (a 7% month-over-month increase). Although not explicitly confirmed, the Base App is likely to conclude its internal beta phase this month, paving the way for a full public launch before the new year.
The primary goal of the on-chain economy Base is attempting to build is to enable creators to profit directly from the content they create. Content created within the Base App is tokenized by default (though users can opt out of this feature), turning each post into a tradable market. Creators can earn a share from the transaction fees generated by their content, specifically 1% of each transaction.
Looking ahead, users will also be able to directly issue creator tokens for accounts within the Base App, opening another monetization avenue (this feature is currently in early testing). At the technical level, both creator tokens and content tokens are tokenized based on the Zora protocol. To date, creators have cumulatively earned $6.1 million through Zora’s tokenization model, with an average monthly payout of $1.1 million since July.
To date, the total number of creators and content tokens tokenized via Zora has exceeded 6.52 million. Among these, 6.45 million (approximately 99% of the total) have not achieved five transactions. Only 17,800 tokens (0.3% of the total) remained actively traded 48 hours after issuance.
Before interpreting these data, it is essential to understand a fundamental fact: the vast majority of content published on the internet is inherently valueless. From this perspective, the fact that 99% of tokens failed to gain market attention might simply reflect the natural distribution of online content, rather than indicating a structural flaw in Base’s model. What truly matters are the tokens that survive beyond 48 hours. We believe that a creator or content token continuing to trade 48 hours after issuance is a signal of genuine value in the creator or content itself.
In other words, Base has barely made a ripple in the creator economy so far. Only 17,800 creator and content tokens have demonstrated sustained activity, which is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the vast amount of online content produced daily. Pessimists might think this model simply doesn’t work, while optimists argue: although Base’s penetration into the creator economy is practically zero, if improvements can be made in content distribution, content discovery, and functional tools, the growth potential is immense. Regardless, increasing the number of tokens that survive beyond 48 hours should be Base’s main focus for 2026.
Finally, Base may also possess the most effective incentive mechanism in the crypto market: a token. In September this year, Base confirmed that it is exploring token issuance but has not yet disclosed specific details regarding distribution methods, utility functions, or a potential launch date. What is most striking about the Base token is not the token itself but its use cases. Unlike most L2s, Base does not need to rely on a token to attract liquidity. Instead, it can use the token to incentivize on-chain creator participation, rewarding behaviors that drive user engagement, content creation, and social activity, rather than short-term trading actions.
In summary, leveraging its established core L2 ecosystem, Base is advancing through distribution channels, product coverage, and potential token incentives to explore consumer and creator-oriented use cases. If this strategy succeeds, Base will build a moat around social and creator ecosystems. This moat is more user-sticky than DeFi TVL or stablecoin balances, and other L2s are not yet at the table.
