L2 adoption snapshots

Ethereum’s layer 2 race is splitting into two different contests: Base is piling up locked assets, while Celo is piling up everyday users. (l2beat.com) (celo.org) Base held about $11.44 billion in total value secured on April 11, according to L2BEAT, second only to Arbitrum One’s $15.75 billion and far ahead of most other Ethereum scaling networks. (l2beat.com) That puts Base at roughly 30% of the $32.08 billion tracked across Ethereum layer 2 networks on L2BEAT’s summary page, a share built less than three years after Coinbase opened Base to the public in August 2023. (l2beat.com 1) (l2beat.com 2) (forbes.com) A layer 2 is a separate network that processes activity away from Ethereum’s main chain and then settles back to Ethereum, aiming to cut costs and increase speed. Base and Celo both use the Optimism software stack, but the metrics drawing attention are different. (docs.base.org) (docs.celo.org) Base’s headline number is capital. L2BEAT’s “total value secured” metric counts assets bridged to or issued on a network, so a high figure says users and applications are parking large sums there, not necessarily that the chain has the most daily users. (l2beat.com 1) (l2beat.com 2) Celo’s pitch is closer to payments infrastructure. Its website says the network is built for fast, low-cost transactions, supports gas payments with tokens such as United States Dollar Coin and Tether, and has scaled applications to more than 250,000 daily active users. (celo.org) Celo completed its migration from a standalone layer 1 blockchain to an Ethereum layer 2 network on March 26, 2025, a shift the project said preserved one-block finality, low fees and mobile-focused features while moving onto Ethereum-aligned infrastructure. (docs.celo.org) (newsletter.celo.org) Celo-linked materials say the network became the number one layer 2 by daily active users during 2025, and Opera said MiniPay had grown to more than 14 million users across more than 66 countries while facilitating more than 400 million transactions. (newsletter.celo.org) (blog.celo.org) Celo’s older identity system tied wallets to phone numbers through privacy-preserving verification, and its documentation still describes phone number verification as a core protocol feature. Recent Celo forum posts said Opera had onboarded more than 11 million people to MiniPay, showing how the network’s adoption case leans on mobile distribution as much as decentralized finance. (docs.celo.org) (forum.celo.org) The contrast is straightforward in the data now circulating: Base looks dominant by assets held onchain, while Celo is presenting itself as a high-frequency consumer payments network with very low fees and a large mobile user base. (l2beat.com) (celo.org)