Base's 2025 report card: revenue increased by 30 times, strengthening the L2 leader position

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Author: AJC, Messari Enterprise Research Manager

Translation: Tim, PANews

By 2025, Base has further solidified its leading position in Ethereum L2 across numerous data metrics. Among them, 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 maintain its dominance in the L2 market. In December 2023, Base’s on-chain revenue was $2.5 million, accounting for only 5% of the total L2 revenue of $53.7 million. One year later, Base’s on-chain revenue grew to $14.7 million, representing 63% of the total L2 revenue of $23.5 million in December 2024. This trend continued into 2025, with Base achieving $75.4 million in revenue so far this year, accounting for 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.

Base’s competitive edge is not only reflected in revenue but also in its DeFi TVL, which has become a leader in the L2 space. After surpassing Arbitrum One in January 2025, Base now holds a DeFi TVL of $4.63 billion, capturing 46% of the entire L2 market. Notably, Base’s DeFi TVL share has steadily increased throughout 2025, rising from 33% at the beginning of the year to its current level.

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

Base also stands out for the scalable development of applications within its ecosystem, creating real value. Since the beginning of this year, applications within the Base ecosystem have generated $369.9 million in revenue. Of particular note, application revenue is mainly concentrated in Aerodrome, which contributed $160.5 million, accounting for 43% of total application revenue. However, the top DEX on Base is not the only successful application in 2025.

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 generated $4.7 million. These figures indicate that a diverse portfolio of revenue-generating products has formed on Base, and ecosystem activity does not rely solely on a single app or use case.

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

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 1,906% year-to-date, from $48.2 million to $966.4 million. Base’s distribution advantage means on-chain activity can become a byproduct of Coinbase’s product usage. This user acquisition channel is unavailable to other L2s, which mainly rely on incentive programs to attract liquidity and users to their DeFi ecosystems.

Despite the continued growth of DeFi TVL and stable revenue on Base in 2025, user on-chain behavior has begun to change. According to daily filtered user counts (independent addresses that perform at least two transactions in a day on specific contracts and spend over 0.0001 ETH in fees), USDC has become the most widely used application on Base. In November, the average daily users of this app reached 83,400, a 233% increase compared to 25,100 in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, retail interactions with DEXs have decreased significantly. The average daily filtered users for 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 transaction volumes.

Key Strategy for Base in 2026: Base App

Leveraging Coinbase’s inherent advantages, Base has established a formidable moat that other chains find hard to match. It has built a solid barrier in terms of user base, liquidity, and application ecosystem. Base leads in revenue among L2 networks, boasts the deepest DeFi TVL in the space, 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 into the creator economy. If captured effectively, this market opportunity could reach a total addressable market of nearly $500 billion. To seize this market, Base’s core strategy focuses on the Base App. This “super app” aims to integrate asset custody, trading, social features, and wallet functionalities into one platform. Unlike most crypto wallets, the 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 discovery, allowing users to access and use various mini-apps directly within the Base App.

The Base App entered internal testing 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 registration accelerating in November, up 93% month-over-month. User retention is strong, with 6,300 weekly active users (up 74%) and 10,500 monthly active users (up 7%). Although not officially confirmed, it is likely that the Base App will conclude internal testing this month and prepare for a full public launch before the new year.

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

Looking ahead, users will also be able to issue creator tokens directly within the Base App, opening another monetization channel (currently in early testing). On the technical layer, both creator tokens and content tokens are tokenized via 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.

So far, the total number of creator and content tokens tokenized via Zora exceeds 6.52 million. Of these, 6.45 million (about 99%) have not achieved five transactions. Only 17,800 tokens (0.3%) remained active after 48 hours of issuance.

Before interpreting these figures, it’s important to understand a basic fact: the vast majority of content published online has little to no value. From this perspective, 99% of tokens failing to attract market attention may simply reflect the natural distribution of content on the internet, rather than a structural flaw in the Base model. The truly important metric is whether tokens survive beyond 48 hours. We believe that if creator or content tokens can still be traded after 48 hours, it signals that the creator or content has genuine value.

In other words, Base has so far made little impact in the creator economy. Only 17,800 creator/content tokens remain actively traded, which is a tiny fraction compared to the vast amount of daily online content. Pessimists might think this model is fundamentally unworkable, but optimists believe that—despite Base’s near-zero penetration into the creator economy—if it can optimize content distribution, discovery, and tooling, the growth potential is enormous. 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 have the most effective incentive mechanism in the crypto market: tokens. In September, Base confirmed it is exploring token issuance, 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 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 activity, 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 move forward, exploring applications for consumers and creators. If successful, Base will build a moat around its social and creator ecosystems—more sticky than DeFi TVL or stablecoin balances—and other L2s have yet to establish such a moat.