Coinbase Positions Base as 'Open Money' L2 Network
Coinbase is marketing its Base L2 network as an "open money" platform designed to sidestep traditional banking gatekeepers. The strategy focuses on promoting permissionless, stablecoin-native DeFi applications. This narrative has reportedly attracted new protocols and memecoin projects to the ecosystem, driving growth in total value locked.
- The Total Value Locked (TVL) on Base has seen significant growth, surpassing $4 billion by April 2024, making it the third-largest Ethereum Layer 2 solution by this metric. Much of this growth is attributed to decentralized exchanges like Aerodrome, which holds over $1 billion in deposits. - Daily active addresses on the network have surged, reaching over 3.5 million in July 2025. This user growth has been fueled by initiatives like the 'Onchain Summer' campaign and the launch of the 'basenames' service, which saw over 200,000 usernames minted in its first week. - Memecoins have become a dominant narrative on Base, with a combined market capitalization of over $585 million by early 2026. Prominent examples include Brett (BRETT), inspired by a character from the "Boy's Club" comic, and Toshi (TOSHI), named after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's cat. - Base head Jesse Pollak has actively promoted the idea of "content coins," where any piece of online content can be tokenized. This experiment in creator monetization was highlighted by the "Coined It" moment, where a tweet was turned into a token that quickly reached a multi-million dollar market cap. - Transaction fees on Base are designed to be low and consist of an L2 execution fee and an L1 security fee. A typical transaction can cost around $0.00014 to $0.00015, significantly lower than Ethereum's mainnet. - In a move to foster a multi-chain ecosystem, Base launched a bridge to Solana in late 2025, powered by Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). This allows for the transfer of tokens and messages between the two networks. - Beyond memecoins, the Base ecosystem includes a growing number of DeFi protocols. Seamless Protocol, a native lending and borrowing market, and Aerodrome, the leading decentralized exchange, are key players in the ecosystem. - While Coinbase has not issued a native network token for Base, JPMorgan analysts have speculated that such a token could reach a market capitalization of up to $34 billion. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has confirmed the team is exploring the idea.
