Newly Launched Base TVL Surges 70% in a Week to Surpass Many Established L2s
The Coinbase layer-2 Base Network has just been officially launched to the public in an event called ‘Onchain Summer.’ Moreover, while it was in the developer testing phase, its total value locked has surged, already surpassing several established protocols.
On Aug. 9, Coinbase announced “Base Day One” as part of its “Onchain Summer” event, opening the network up to the public.
Coinbase Base Goes Live
On Aug. 10, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong celebrated the launch, Tweeting:
“Today is an important day for accelerating a global, decentralized financial system and increasing economic freedom in the world.”
Furthermore, the Base mainnet features more than 100 dApps and service providers in the ecosystem. Since its testnet launch in February, Base has onboarded several projects, including DeFi protocols, wallets, cross-chain bridges, oracles, and analytics providers.
Coinbase protocol lead Jesse Pollak said at the launch,
“There are 100+ dapps and service providers available in the Base ecosystem, as well as deep integrations across the Coinbase product ecosystem.”
Moreover, its total value locked has surged 72% over the past week, according to L2beat. Base currently holds $147 million in collateral and ranks fifth in the layer-2 ecosystem.
Although its total value locked (TVL) is tiny compared to market-dominant Arbitrum and Optimism, it has allowed the network to outperform other established layer-2 projects like Starknet and Loopring.
Base TVL 1 week. Source: L2beat
Base Performance and Layer-2 Ecosystem Outlook
Coinbase has touted Base as being faster and cheaper than layer-1 Ethereum. However, it is only processing 5.8 transactions per second at the moment, which is about half that of Ethereum.
Base is built on the Optimism OP stack, so its throughput should be much higher than it currently operates at.
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DeFi decentralization advocate Chris Blec took a swipe at the protocol, claiming, “Coinbase is playing chicken with lawmakers and regulators.”
“We cannot allow centralized projects like Base to masquerade as “decentralized” or “permissionless” just because the companies behind them are making a strategic decision not to use their centralized control.”
“That’s not crypto. That’s just fintech on a blockchain,” he added.
Arbitrum One dominates the layer-2 ecosystem with a TVL of $6 billion and a market share of 57%.
Optimism is in second place with $2.8 billion TVL and a market share of 27%, while zkSync is third with a 4% slice of the layer-2 market.
Base has just 1.4% market share at the moment, but its early growth is promising for Coinbase.