Quicknode

July 7, 2025 — 9 min read

Back in 2016, Brian Armstrong shared “The Coinbase Secret Master Plan”, a simple roadmap to creating an open financial system for the world. The ultimate goal was bold: moving from the initial 1 million early adopters to bringing one billion users into the crypto economy.

It sounded ambitious then.

But nearly a decade later, that vision is quietly becoming real through Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain, which is today scaling identity, creativity, commerce, and everything in between.

In this report, we’ll explore how Base is the world’s first culturally scalable blockchain, and what that means for the future of the onchain economy.

A Quick Beginner’s Guide to Base

Base is Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain, built on the OP Stack and launched publicly on August 9, 2023. It offers developers a secure, scalable, and Ethereum-aligned environment but with something most other L2s lack: built-in distribution, UX polish, and cultural resonance.

Here’s what makes Base different:

• Distribution advantage: Your app launches 110M+ people day one. While other blockchains make you find users, Base hands you Coinbase's entire customer base.

• User experience: No more seed phrases or has fee math: Users go from credit card to using your app in 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.

• Technical foundation: Built on the OP Stack, inheriting Ethereum security and tapping into a shared, open-source ecosystem

• Trusted infrastructure: Base is backed by Coinbase, a publicly traded crypto company in the US

• Interoperability: Base is compatible with Ethereum mainnet and cross-chain relation with other L2s and L1 ecosystems.

• Developer resources: Deep developer tooling, including support for Solidity/Vyper, Paymasters, and gasless transactions

• Cultural flywheel: Stablecoins, activations, memes, and social apps that make being onchain fun.

Base combines Ethereum-grade security with Coinbase-grade UX and adds a fast-growing culture layer on top.

Base's Growth Strategy: The Three Pillars

Base has operated from a fundamentally different playbook since launch.

Rather than optimizing for crypto natives, Base built its growth strategy around three interconnected pillars designed to bring mainstream users onchain. This approach has created compounding advantages that explain how Base went from zero to processing more weekly transactions than Ethereum mainnet in under two years.

User-first infrastructure

Base prioritized user experience infrastructure over raw throughput. Smart Wallets eliminated seed phrases, gasless transactions removed friction, and seamless Coinbase integration meant users could go from fiat to onchain activity in seconds, not hours.

Culture as a growth engine

Perhaps most uniquely, Base recognized early that viral moments and cultural participation drive adoption faster than developer incentives alone. From the inaugural Onchain Summer campaign in 2023 to the content coins phenomenon in 2025, Base has consistently treated culture as a core growth lever.

The tolerance for experimentation even with controversial campaigns like ‘Base is for everyone’ reflects Base’s commitment to cultural evolution.

Ecosystem development without token incentives

Base has supported builders and projects committed to long-term value creation with accessible funding via Coinbase Ventures and Echo.xyz. Till date, the Base Ecosystem Fund has funded over 40 teams building genuine utility.

Base Batches is a new initiative that starts off with regional hackathons, community-hosted virtual and live workshop events in over 30 cities across the world. Winners from these events get to pitch to partners of Base and Coinbase for a share of up to $1,000,000 in funding.

Alongside these three, Base's most significant strategic advantage is something no competitor can replicate: direct access to Coinbase's 110+ million user base.

• New applications launching on Base immediately gain access to millions of potential users, making Base more attractive to developers.

• More developers building on Base creates more reasons for Coinbase users to explore onchain experiences.

Together, these pillars have enabled Base to grow not just technically, but culturally, positioning it as a blockchain built for people.

Base by the Numbers: Growth at Scale

While culture, onboarding, and builder support have shaped Base’s reputation, its on-chain metrics tell the same story: one of breakout growth and sustained momentum. In 2025, Base has not only outpaced its L2 peers in engagement, but has done so profitably, at scale, and without a native token.

Here are some numbers reflecting Base’s growth:

1. Base has captured 54.8% market share of L2 revenue, generating $72.1 million over the past year compared to the combined $131.5 million from all other L2s.

Base makes more money from every other Layer 2 combined.

Let that sink in — one blockchain, launched 18 months ago, now captures 54.8% of the entire L2 market.

That's like a startup restaurant making more than McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC put together.

2. With 38.1 million monthly active addresses, Base represents 64.1% of all L2 monthly active users.

3. Base also is currently operating with an 84.35% profit margin since inception without relying on token subsidies or unsustainable incentive programs.

4. Base hosts approximately $3.6 billion in USDC outstanding supply positioning itself as a major hub for onchain activity especially in the DeFi space.

5. Base processes 299.02 million transactions monthly, with consistent 20%+ MoM growth with an impressive 305% year-over-year increase.

These metrics collectively illustrate how Base's focus on cultural scalability has generated tangible business results.

Base in 2025: Seven Events That Defined Cultural Scalability

In 2025, Base demonstrated what it means to scale culture. The following seven events — spanning DeFi, NFTs, social tokens, retail adoption, and creator monetization — offer proof that Base is becoming the first culturally scalable blockchain.

Each milestone reinforced Base’s core mission: to make web3 accessible, engaging, and intuitive for everyone.

Base’s DeFi Layer Goes Mainstream

Uniswap and Aerodrome turned Base into a liquidity powerhouse. Aerodrome alone processed ~$3.34B in June 2025 and accounted for 54% of DEX volume on Base, while Uniswap supported over 400 projects. Combined, they pushed Base’s DeFi TVL to $9.1B.

Memecoins = Masses

While serious blockchains rolled their eyes at meme coins, Base embraced the chaos.

Base-native tokens like Brett and Base God (TYBG) sparked viral engagement, helping daily active addresses climb to 2.9 million.

With a market cap of $69M, TYBG became more than a meme, it became a cultural symbol. This cultural strategy directly contributed to Base reaching 33.9 million monthly active users and 2.9 million daily active addresses.

What Base did with memecoins is: it brought 2.9 million people who hadn’t touched DeFi before onchain. Turns out, making people laugh is better marketing than white papers

Shopify's Stablecoin Integration

In June 2025, Base's partnership with Shopify represented a breakthrough moment for crypto payments. The integration enabled approximately 2 million merchants across 34 countries to accept USDC payments natively, with 1% cashback and no foreign transaction fees.

This bridges web2 e-commerce with web3 infrastructure, creating a seamless checkout experience. With Base's transaction fees below 1¢, the integration makes crypto payments practically free for merchants.

24/7 USDC Payments

Coinbase's launch of 24/7 USDC payment capabilities on Base transcended traditional banking limitations. The system enables instant, global payments without the constraints of business hours or geographic boundaries. It abstracts away the crypto complexity for both users and merchants:

Consumers can pay from hundreds of wallets (Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, etc.) with a gas-free user experience, while merchants receive funds in fiat by default.

Onchain Summer

Onchain Summer is now Base’s flagship yearly event, significantly boosting onchain activity in 2024 and beyond. Spanning three months (summer 2024), it drew over 2 million unique wallets to participate and resulted in 24 million+ onchain assets minted (NFTs and collectibles), about 8x the participation of the prior year.

Creators and builders earned $5+ million in mint revenue during the event. Some of the collaborations at this event include Doodles, Usa Basketball, Atari, Pharrell Williams.

OpenSea and the Get Base’d Campaign

NFT marketplace OpenSea ran a dedicated ‘Get Base’d’ campaign to promote Base’s NFT ecosystem, which saw viral participation. In summer 2024 OpenSea began weekly NFT drops on Base (priced ~$5 or free) highlighting emerging Base-native artists.

The campaign’s most notable drop was “Only the Based Survive,” a motto turned NFT in partnership with Base community. That open-edition mint went viral, with over 180,000 NFTs minted (one per wallet).

Another drop, an animated short titled “The Base Era Begins” was available for 2 days and garnered 73,000+ mints in that short window. These low-cost, high-volume mints drove social media buzz (the Base community and even Coinbase leadership amplified them) and onboarded many new NFT collectors to Base.

Base is for everyone Tokenization

In April 2025, Base sparked controversy (and curiosity) with an experimental content coin.

Base’s official X (Twitter) account posted the phrase “Base is for everyone” on the Zora protocol, which automatically minted an ERC-20 token from the post. Traders rapidly piled in: the unofficial ‘Base is for everyone’ token’s market cap shot to ~$13 million, $28 million in trading volume, and earned over $60,000 in creator fees.

The “Base is for everyone” experiment, while controversial, demonstrated this concept: yielding real revenue to creators and igniting discussion on the future of social tokens on Base.

The Road Ahead for Base: Culture as the Catalyst

Here's what Base figured out that everyone else missed: Normal people don't care about your transaction speeds. They care about belonging to something bigger than themselves. Base didn't just build a blockchain — they built a place where internet culture goes to make money. And that changes everything.

As the lines blur between finance, identity, and expression, Base offers a template for the next era of web3: one where everyone belongs, and anyone can build.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What does “culturally scalable” mean in the context of Base?

It means Base isn’t just technically optimized, it’s designed to resonate with users through social apps, memes, creator tools, and simplified UX.

Culture becomes the catalyst for adoption.

How is Base different from other Ethereum L2s?

Base focuses on seamless onboarding, consumer UX, and mass-market activations. It doesn’t have a token, instead relying on Coinbase integrations, ecosystem support, and cultural momentum.

What are "content coins" and why are they significant?

Content coins are experimental tokens created from social media posts, allowing creators to monetize individual pieces of content. Base's "Base is for everyone" experiment generated $28M in trading volume, demonstrating new models for creator economy monetization.