Base's 2025 report card: 30-fold revenue growth, solidifying its leading position in L2 gaming.

Author: AJC , Corporate Research Manager at Messari

Compiled by: Tim, PANews

In 2025, Base further solidified its leading position in Ethereum L2 across numerous data metrics. Among them, revenue is the most telling indicator of its dominance in the entire L2 ecosystem.

Despite a significant decline in total L2 revenue from its 2024 peak, Base continues to dominate the L2 market. In December 2023, Base's on-chain revenue was $2.5 million, representing only 5% of the total L2 revenue of $53.7 million. A year later, Base's on-chain revenue grew to $14.7 million, accounting for 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 year-to-date, representing 62% of the total L2 revenue of $120.7 million.

Base's leading advantage is not only reflected in revenue, but its DeFi TVL has also made it the leader in the L2 market. After surpassing Arbitrum One in January 2025, Base currently holds 46% of the entire L2 market with a DeFi TVL of $4.63 billion. Crucially, Base's DeFi TVL share has been steadily climbing throughout 2025, growing from 33% at the beginning of the year to its current level.

Base's biggest advantage over other L2 solutions lies in its distribution channels, the importance of which is self-evident. According to Coinbase's latest 10-Q filing, it had 9.3 million monthly active trading users in the third quarter. This allows Base to directly reach a large and established user base, something other L2 networks struggle to achieve. While most L2 networks must acquire users through incentives or third-party integrations, Base gains a natural distribution advantage thanks to its direct connection to the largest centralized exchange in the US.

Base also stands out due to the scaled growth and real-world value creation of applications within its ecosystem. This year alone, applications within the Base ecosystem have generated $369.9 million in revenue. Notably, Aerodrome accounts for the majority of application revenue, contributing $160.5 million, or 43% of total application revenue. However, the leading DEXs on Base are not the only successful applications expected in 2025.

The AI proxy launch platform Virtuals has generated $43.2 million in revenue, accounting for 12% of the total revenue of Base's ecosystem applications; while the recently launched sports prediction application Football.Fun has also generated $4.7 million in revenue. These figures indicate that Base has formed a portfolio of revenue-generating products across multiple fields, and the ecosystem's activity is not dependent on a single application or use case.

This distribution advantage is best exemplified in the partnership between Coinbase and Morpho. This collaboration allows Coinbase users to borrow USDC directly on the platform using crypto assets as collateral. While the user experience is integrated into the Coinbase website, collateral management and loan execution are handled on-chain through Morpho's deployment on Base. This lending product, launched less than a year ago, has already achieved considerable adoption.

Coinbase users have applied for $866.3 million in loans through Morpho, currently accounting for 90% of Morpho's active lending on the Base network. During the same period, Morpho's TVL on the Base chain grew by 1906% year-to-date, climbing from $48.2 million to $966.4 million. Base's distribution advantage means that on-chain activity can be a byproduct of Coinbase's product usage. This user acquisition channel is not available on other L2 networks, leading them to rely primarily on incentive programs to attract liquidity and users to the DeFi ecosystem.

Despite the continued growth of DeFi TVL on the Base chain since 2025 and the stability of on-chain revenue, user on-chain behavior has begun to change. According to the daily average filtered user count (referring to unique addresses that conduct at least two transactions in a specific contract and consume more than 0.0001 units of gas fees in a single day), USDC has now become the most widely used application on the Base chain, with an average of 83,400 daily users in November, a 233% year-on-year increase from 25,100 in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, retail investor interaction with DEXs has decreased significantly. Daily filtered user numbers on Uniswap and Aerodrome have dropped by 74% and 49%, respectively. More notably, on-Base DEX trading volume reached an all-time high in 2025, indicating that activity on Uniswap and Aerodrome is increasingly concentrated in the hands of traders with larger capital and higher trading volumes.

Base's key strategic plans for 2026: Base App

Base leverages Coinbase's inherent advantages, a luxury unmatched by other blockchains. It has built a solid moat in terms of user base, liquidity, and application ecosystem. Base leads in revenue among L2 networks, boasts the deepest DeFi TVL in the field, and continuously receives on-chain user traffic from Coinbase. In other words, unlike most L2 networks still struggling to establish themselves or attract users, Base has already surpassed this stage of development.

Leveraging this competitive advantage, Base has set its sights beyond core L2 network metrics, targeting the creator economy. If this market opportunity is capitalized on, its potential total market size is estimated to approach $500 billion. To capture this market, Base's core strategy focuses on the Base App. This "super app" aims to integrate core functions such as asset custody, trading, social networking, and wallet functionality. Unlike most crypto wallets, the Base App features several innovative functions that go beyond basic asset management:

• Social messaging streams based on Farcaster and Zora;
• XMTP enables direct messaging and group chat functionality (supporting interaction with other users and AI agents such as Bankr).
• The built-in mini-app discovery feature allows users to directly access and use various mini-apps within the Base App.

Base App launched its internal beta version in July, initially limited to users invited through a whitelist. Despite this, Base App has achieved significant growth. A total of 148,400 users have created accounts, with registrations accelerating in November, showing a 93% month-over-month increase. User retention has also been strong, with weekly active users reaching 6,300 (a 74% month-over-month increase) and monthly active users reaching 10,500 (a 7% month-over-month increase). Although not explicitly confirmed, Base App is likely to end its internal beta phase this month, paving the way for a full public release before the New Year.

The primary goal of the on-chain economy that Base is attempting to build is to enable creators to directly monetize their content. Content created within the Base App is tokenized by default (although users can opt out of this feature), effectively turning each post into a tradable marketplace. Creators can earn a share of the transaction fees generated by their content, specifically 1% of each transaction.

Looking ahead, users will also be able to issue creator tokens directly for their accounts within the Base App, opening up another monetization avenue (this feature is currently in early testing). At the underlying technology level, 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.

To date, the total number of creator and content tokens tokenized through Zora has exceeded 6.52 million. Of these, 6.45 million (approximately 99% of the total) failed to achieve five transactions. Only 17,800 tokens (0.3% of the total) remained actively traded 48 hours after their release.

Before interpreting this data, it's crucial to understand a fundamental fact: the vast majority of content published online is inherently valueless. From this perspective, the fact that 99% of tokens fail to gain market attention may simply reflect the natural distribution of online content, rather than a structural flaw in the Base model. What truly matters are the tokens that survive for more than 48 hours. We believe that the continued trading of creator or content tokens 48 hours after issuance signals that the creator or content itself possesses genuine value.

In other words, Base has so far barely made a splash in the creator economy. Only 17,800 creator and content tokens have shown sustained activity, a drop in the ocean compared to the massive amount of online content produced daily. Pessimists might think this model is simply unworkable, but optimists believe that while Base's penetration rate in the creator economy is practically zero, there is significant room for growth if optimizations are made in content distribution, content discovery, and functional tools. In any case, increasing the number of tokens that survive for more than 48 hours should be Base's primary focus in 2026.

Finally, Base may possess the most effective incentive mechanism in the crypto market: a token. In September, Base confirmed it was exploring token issuance, but has yet to release specific details regarding allocation methods, utility features, or a potential launch date. The most compelling aspect of the Base token isn't the token itself, but its use cases. Unlike most L2 cryptocurrencies, Base doesn't rely on tokens to attract liquidity. Instead, it can incentivize on-chain creators, rewarding actions that drive user engagement, content creation, and social activity, rather than short-term trading.

In summary, leveraging its established L2 core ecosystem, Base is moving forward by utilizing distribution channels, product reach, and potential token incentives to explore use cases for consumers and creators. If this strategy succeeds, Base will build a moat around its social and creator ecosystem. This moat will generate greater user stickiness than DeFi TVL or stablecoin balances, while other L2 technologies are not yet on the table.