Original Title: Are you Based? Base’s Outlook for 2026
Original Author: AJC, Messari
Original Compilation: Tim, PANews
In 2025, Base further solidified its leading position as an Ethereum L2 across numerous data metrics. Among these, revenue is the most indicative metric of 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. One 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 achieving $75.4 million in revenue year-to-date, accounting for 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.
Base’s leading advantage is not only reflected in revenue but also in its DeFi TVL, which has become the leader in the L2 space. After surpassing Arbitrum One in January 2025, Base now holds a DeFi TVL of $4.63 billion, accounting for 46% of the entire L2 market. Notably, Base’s share of DeFi TVL has continued to rise throughout 2025, steadily increasing 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 reach a large and already engaged user base, a feat that other L2 networks find difficult to match. While most L2s must rely on incentives or third-party integrations to acquire users, Base, with its direct connection to the largest centralized exchange in the United States, enjoys a natural distribution advantage.
Base also stands out due to the scaling of applications within its ecosystem and the creation of tangible value. 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 achieved success in 2025.
The AI agent launch platform Virtuals has generated $43.2 million in revenue, accounting for 12% of the total application revenue in the Base ecosystem; while the recently launched sports prediction application Football.Fun has already generated $4.7 million in revenue. These figures indicate that Base has developed a portfolio of revenue-generating products across multiple fields, and the ecosystem’s activity does not rely 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 has been launched for less than a year but has already achieved considerable 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 grew by 1,906% year-to-date, climbing 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 not available to other L2 networks, causing them to primarily rely on incentive programs to attract liquidity and users to their DeFi ecosystems.
Although Base’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 and consumed more than 0.0001 units of gas fee in a single day), USDC has now become the most widely used application on the Base chain, with a daily average of 83,400 users in November, a 233% year-over-year increase compared to 25,100 users in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, retail interaction with DEXs has significantly decreased. The daily filtered user numbers for Uniswap and Aerodrome have dropped by 74% and 49%, respectively. However, more notably, DEX trading volume on the Base chain reached a record high in 2025, meaning that activity on Uniswap and Aerodrome is increasingly concentrated in the hands of traders with larger capital and higher trading volumes.
Base’s Key Focus for 2026: Base App
Base’s inherent advantage of relying on 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 can continuously receive on-chain user traffic from Coinbase. In other words, unlike most L2 networks that are still struggling to establish a foothold or attract users, Base has long surpassed this development stage.
With this moat, Base’s vision has extended beyond core L2 network metrics to 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 market share in this direction, Base’s core strategy focuses on the Base App. This “super app” aims to integrate asset custody, trading, social, and wallet core functions into one. 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 interaction 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 its internal beta in July, initially limited to users invited via a whitelist. Despite this, the Base App still 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 has also been strong, with 6,300 weekly active users (a 74% month-over-month increase) and 10,500 monthly active users (a 7% month-over-month increase). Although not explicitly confirmed, it is highly likely that the Base App will conclude its internal testing phase this month, paving the way for a full public launch before the new year.
The most important goal of the on-chain economy Base is trying to build is to enable creators to directly profit from the content they create. Content created within the Base App is tokenized by default (although 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 the 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). Technically, both creator tokens and content tokens are tokenized based on the Zora protocol. To date, creators have accumulated $6.1 million in earnings 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) failed to achieve five transactions. Only 17,800 tokens (0.3% of the total) remained actively traded 48 hours after issuance.
Before interpreting these figures, it is essential to understand a basic fact: the vast majority of content published on the internet inherently has no value. 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 the Base 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 that the creator or content itself possesses genuine value.
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 a drop in the ocean compared to the massive amount of online content produced daily. Pessimists might think this model simply doesn’t work, while optimists believe: although Base’s penetration into the creator economy is effectively close to zero, if improvements are made in content distribution, content discovery, and functional tools, the growth potential is vast. Regardless, increasing the number of tokens that survive beyond 48 hours should be a primary focus for Base in 2026.
Finally, Base may also possess the most effective incentive mechanism in the crypto market: tokens. In September of this year, Base confirmed that it is exploring issuing a token but has not yet disclosed specific details regarding distribution methods, utility functions, or a potential launch date. What is most compelling about a Base token is not the token itself but its use cases. Unlike most L2s, Base does not need to rely on tokens to attract liquidity. Instead, it can use tokens to incentivize on-chain creator participation, rewarding behaviors that drive user engagement, content creation, and social activity, rather than short-term trading behavior.
In summary, leveraging its established core L2 ecosystem, Base is moving forward using distribution channels, product coverage, and potential token incentives to explore consumer and creator-facing 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.
