Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, Base, has experienced a significant increase in its total value locked (TVL), surpassing $4 billion for the first time. In the past week alone, its TVL has surged by over 13.2%. According to data from L2BEAT, Base’s total TVL currently stands at $4.15 billion, with $1.45 billion of canonically bridged value and $2.7 billion in natively minted assets.
Base now ranks as the third-largest Ethereum layer 2 by TVL, outperforming its closest competitor Blast by approximately $1.4 billion. However, it still lags behind Optimism in second place, with a TVL difference of $3.5 billion, and leader Arbitrum with a considerable margin of $14.6 billion.
Among the top 5 layer 2s by TVL, Base is the only one that has witnessed a gain in the past week. Starknet suffered the largest TVL loss at 10.2%, followed by Optimism at 9.1%, Arbitrum at 5.5%, and Blast at 2.4%.
Base’s increase in TVL coincides with a surge in activity, as its 30-day transaction count has exceeded both Arbitrum and Ethereum. With 50.34 million transactions, Base has outperformed Arbitrum’s 40.1 million and Ethereum’s 37.9 million.
Furthermore, Base’s average daily transactions per second (TPS) have jumped by 29.7% in the past week, reaching an average of 35.19 TPS. This is higher than the combined TPS of Arbitrum and Ethereum, which recorded respective scores of 16.61 and 13.91.
In addition to its success in TVL and transaction activity, Base has also benefited from the recent surge in memecoin activity. The market capitalization of its meme token has surpassed $1.6 billion, marking a 13% increase in just one day, according to CoinGecko.
However, Base’s popularity has also attracted scammers, leading to an 18-fold increase in successful phishing scams on the network from January to March. In March alone, $3.35 million was stolen through these scams.
While Ethereum has been focusing on enhancing its ability to process layer-2 transaction data, as demonstrated by its March 13 Dencun update that lowered layer 2 transaction fees, layer 2 solutions like Base could benefit from Ethereum’s limitations. Analysts at VanEck estimate that the network’s scaling ecosystem could reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2030.
As the blockchain industry progresses, there is a growing debate about the relevance of measuring blockchain transactions per second (TPS) in 2024. Many consider it an outdated metric, raising important questions about the future direction of the technology.