Base’s TVL Hits $8 Billion After Dethroning OP Mainnet: A Sign of Scaling Success?

• The Ethereum Layer-2 network Base has surged to over $8 billion in TVL, surpassing Optimism’s OP Mainnet and becoming the second-largest Ethereum Layer-2 network.
• Despite a 58.6% decline in on-chain profits to $6.98 million in May, Base remains the most profitable Ethereum layer-2 network.

In the latest development, the Ethereum Layer-2 network Base has surpassed $8 billion on total value locked (TVL) while overtaking Optimism’s OP Mainnet. This makes Base the second-largest Ethereum Layer-2, just behind Arbitrum One, with $18.7 billion in TVL. Of the total $8 billion in TVL, $5.92 billion comes as part of the natively minted assets while $2.14 billion in canonically bridged value.

Supported by Coinbase, Base has experienced remarkable growth since its launch in August 2023. By February, the network reached $1 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) and has expanded eightfold in just 104 days.

Base has also outperformed in terms of transactions per second (TPS) over the past month. The network processed 64.95 million transactions at a rate of 30.36 TPS, outstripping Arbitrum One’s 23.52 TPS. This high transaction throughput underscores Base’s scalability and its widespread adoption among users and developers.

Financially, Base has demonstrated significant success with record on-chain profits. In March, the network achieved a peak profit of $16.9 million, maintaining its lead over other Ethereum layer 2 solutions. Although profits dipped to $6.98 million in May, Base has remained the most profitable Ethereum scaler for three consecutive months.

Base’s on-chain profits declined by 58.6% to $6.98 million in May. Despite this drop, it remains the most profitable Ethereum layer 2 network, surpassing the next highest, OP Mainnet, which recorded $1.57 million in profits last month.

Base Benefits From Meme Coin Mania

The network’s attractiveness to memecoin projects has also drawn scammers, leading to an 18-fold increase in funds stolen through phishing scams from January to March. This underscores the critical need for user education and robust security measures in the rapidly evolving decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape.

Despite these challenges, analysts at asset manager VanEck remain optimistic about the future of Ethereum layer-2 scaling networks like Base. They project that these networks could reach a combined market cap of $1 trillion by 2030, driven by factors such as transaction pricing, developer experience, user experience, trust assumptions, and ecosystem size.

However, in another development, Friend.tech plans to leave Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 Base, which could significantly impact the platform’s cost structure and user interactions. Friend.tech, a decentralized social media platform, has teamed up with crypto infrastructure firm Conduit to create its own blockchain, named Friendchain. This move to develop its own blockchain comes after a period of stagnating transactions following its robust launch in August 2023.

Following the announcement on June 9, the platform’s native token, FRIEND, saw a brief price surge but has since declined by nearly 5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.