Base Chain's 2025 Report Card: Revenue grows 30 times, consolidating the leading position in L2

2025 marks a further solidification of Base’s position as a leading Ethereum L2 across numerous data indicators. Revenue grew from $2.5 million in December 2023 to $14.7 million in December 2024, capturing a 63% market share, and maintaining leadership in key metrics such as DeFi TVL and user numbers. In 2026, the focus will shift to Base App’s layout in the creator economy. This article is based on a piece by Messari, compiled, edited, and written by PANews.
(Previous context: Base chain 33-minute block report: the centralization risks behind efficiency and the growth challenges of Layer 2)
(Additional background: When Base meets Solana: the end of inter-chain wars, the start of traffic wars)

In 2025, Base further cemented its status as a leading Ethereum L2 across many data metrics. Among these, revenue is the most indicative of its dominance within the entire L2 ecosystem.

Although the total revenue of L2 has significantly declined from its peak in 2024, Base continues to hold a dominant position in the L2 market. In December 2023, on-chain revenue for Base was $2.5 million, accounting for only 5% of the total L2 revenue of $53.7 million. One year later, on-chain revenue increased to $14.7 million, representing 63% of the December 2024 total L2 revenue of $23.5 million. This trend continued into 2025, with Base achieving $75.4 million in revenue since the beginning of the year, accounting for 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.

Base’s competitive advantage is not only reflected in revenue but also in its DeFi TVL, which has become the leader in the L2 track. After surpassing Arbitrum One in January 2025, Base’s DeFi TVL of $4.63 billion accounts for 46% of the entire L2 market. Notably, Base’s DeFi TVL share has continued to rise throughout 2025, growing steadily from 33% at the start of the year to the current level.

Compared to other L2 solutions, Base’s biggest advantage lies in its distribution channels, a benefit that needs no elaboration. According to Coinbase’s latest 10-Q filing, in Q3, it had 9.3 million monthly active trading users, enabling Base to directly reach a large and already onboarded user base—something other L2 networks find difficult to match. While most L2s must rely on incentives or third-party integrations to attract users, Base leverages its direct connection with the largest centralized exchange platform in the U.S., gaining a natural distribution advantage.

Base also stands out due to the scalable development of applications within its ecosystem, creating real value. This year, applications within the Base ecosystem generated $369 million in revenue. Notably, application revenue is mainly concentrated in Aerodrome, which contributed $160.5 million, accounting for 43% of total application revenue. However, the leading DEX on Base in 2025 is not the only successful application.

AI agent launch platform Virtuals has achieved $43.2 million in revenue, accounting for 12% of the total revenue from applications on Base; recently launched sports prediction app Football.Fun has also generated $4.7 million. These figures indicate that a portfolio of revenue-generating products across multiple fields has formed on Base, and ecosystem activity does not rely solely on a single app or use case.

This distribution advantage is best exemplified in the partnership case between Coinbase and Morpho. This collaboration allows Coinbase users to borrow USDC directly on the platform using crypto assets as collateral. Although the experience is embedded within Coinbase’s website, collateral management and loan execution are completed on-chain via Morpho’s deployment on Base. Launched less than a year ago, this lending product has achieved a high adoption rate.

Coinbase users have borrowed a total of $866.3 million through Morpho, accounting for 90% of Morpho’s active loans on the Base network. Meanwhile, Morpho’s TVL on Base has grown 1906% year-to-date, rising from $48.2 million to $966.4 million. Base’s distribution advantage means on-chain activity can become a byproduct of Coinbase product usage. This user onboarding pipeline is unmatched by other L2 networks, which mainly rely on incentive programs to attract liquidity and users to their DeFi ecosystems.

Although DeFi TVL on Base has continued to grow since 2025, and on-chain revenue remains stable, user on-chain behavior has begun to change. According to daily average filtered user statistics (independent addresses that perform at least two transactions within a specific contract and consume over 0.0001 units of gas), USDC has become the most widely used application on Base. In November, the average daily users of this application reached 83,400, a 233% increase compared to 25,100 in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, retail and DEX interactions have decreased significantly. Daily filtered users of Uniswap and Aerodrome fell by 74% and 49%, respectively. However, more notably, DEX trading volume on Base hit a record high in 2025, indicating that activity on Uniswap and Aerodrome is increasingly concentrated among larger traders with higher capital and transaction volumes.

$1 Base 2026 Key Layout: Base App

Relying on Coinbase’s inherent advantages, Base has established a formidable moat that other chains find hard to match. It has built a solid barrier in user base, liquidity, and application ecosystem. Base leads in L2 revenue, boasts the deepest DeFi TVL in the field, and continues to attract on-chain traffic from Coinbase. In other words, unlike most L2s still struggling to establish themselves or attract users, Base has already moved beyond this developmental stage.

With this moat, Base’s vision extends beyond core L2 metrics toward the creator economy. If this market opportunity is seized, the potential total market size is estimated to approach $500 billion. To capture this market, Base’s core strategy focuses on Base App. This “super app” aims to integrate asset custody, trading, social features, and wallet functions into one platform. Unlike most crypto wallets, Base App incorporates several innovative features beyond basic asset management:

· Social feed based on Farcaster and Zora;

· Direct messaging and group chat via XMTP (supporting interactions with other users and AI agents like Bankr);

· Built-in mini-app exploration, allowing users to access and use various mini-apps directly within Base App.

Base App launched an internal beta in July, initially available only through whitelist invitations. Despite this, it has achieved significant growth. A total of 148,400 users have created accounts, with November seeing a rapid increase in registrations—up 93% month-over-month. User retention is also strong, with 6,300 weekly active users (up 74%) and 10,500 monthly active users (up 7%). Although not officially confirmed, it is very likely that Base App will conclude its internal testing phase this month, paving the way for a full public launch before the new year.

The most important goal of the on-chain economy that Base is trying to build is enabling creators to monetize their content directly. Content created within Base App is set to be tokenized by default (though users can opt out), transforming each post into a tradable market. Creators can earn a share of transaction fees generated from their content, typically 1% per transaction.

Looking ahead, users will also be able to issue creator tokens directly within Base App, opening another monetization channel (currently in early testing). On the technical layer, both creator tokens and content tokens are tokenized based on the Zora protocol. To date, creators have earned a total of $6.1 million through Zora’s tokenization model, with an average monthly payout of $1.1 million since July.

As of now, the total number of creator and content tokens tokenized via Zora exceeds 6.52 million. Among these, 6.45 million (about 99%) have not achieved five transactions. Only 17,800 tokens (0.3%) remain actively traded 48 hours after issuance.

Before interpreting these figures, it’s essential to understand a basic fact: the vast majority of content published online has no intrinsic value. From this perspective, the fact that 99% of tokens fail to attract market attention may simply reflect the natural distribution of online content, rather than a structural flaw in the Base model. The truly important ones are those tokens that survive beyond 48 hours. We believe that if creator or content tokens can continue trading after 48 hours, it signals that the creator or content itself has genuine value.

In other words, so far, Base has almost no impact in the creator economy. Only 17,800 creator and content tokens remain actively traded, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amount of online content produced daily. Pessimists might think this model is fundamentally unworkable, but optimists believe: although Base’s penetration into the creator economy is nearly zero, there is enormous growth potential if it can optimize content distribution, discovery, and functional tools. In any case, increasing the number of tokens that survive beyond 48 hours should be a primary focus for Base in 2026.

Finally, Base may also possess the most effective incentive mechanism in the crypto market: tokens. In September, Base confirmed it is exploring issuing a token, but has not yet announced specific details about distribution, utility, or launch date. The most compelling aspect of the Base token is not the token itself but its application scenarios. Unlike most L2s, Base does not need to rely on tokens to attract liquidity. Instead, it can use tokens to incentivize on-chain creator participation, rewarding behaviors that drive user engagement, content creation, and social activities, rather than short-term trading.

In summary, with its established core L2 ecosystem, Base is leveraging distribution channels, product coverage, and potential token incentives to push forward, exploring consumer and creator application cases. If successful, Base will build a moat around social and creator ecosystems—more sticky than DeFi TVL or stablecoin balances—and other L2s have yet to establish such a moat.