Base’s seven lap breaks

Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News

Throughout 2024, there are two blockchain ecosystems that are the most eye-catching, one is Solana, and the other is Base.

Although it was born less than a year and a half ago, Base has experienced seven breakthroughs and has become the strongest L2 in Ethereum. At two major time points in 2024 (the adoption of the Bitcoin spot ETF and the election of Trump as the new president), it did not miss any opportunity to break the circle and expand the length and breadth of the encryption industry.

Since February last year, I have continued to be optimistic about Base, from Degen (up to 50 times), Clanker (up to 70 times) to Virtuals (many interviews with founder Wee Kee)...except for friend.tech, which has not participated, almost I never missed a moment to participate in Base's important circle-breaking events, and witnessed Base's development from its inception to the second most active blockchain innovation ecosystem in the crypto world.

History reflects the future, so I have compiled seven of Base’s lap-breaking moments.

Breaking the circle for the first time: friend.tech collected US$54

million

Although friend.tech ultimately failed, it became Base's first step into the encryption arena.

The emergence of friend.tech in August 2023 was Base's first breakthrough. This break attracted a large number of practitioners and well-known KOLs to join, allowing many people to see Base for the first time. friend.tech generated over $2 million in revenue in its first month, with net deposits exceeding $33 million.

From August 2023 to May 2024, friend.tech's protocol revenue reached 17056.5 ETH (approximately US$54.647 million at the time). This data even exceeded the protocol revenue of most L2s, and the total number of users reached 909,861 independent address.

However, after May, friend.tech took a turn for the worse. Racer, the co-founder of friend.tech, posted on social media, hinting at the intention to move the friend.tech protocol from the Base platform. This news immediately caused the price of the protocol's native token FRIEND to drop sharply. On the day of the announcement, the price of FRIEND dropped to US$1.01, a 24-hour drop of 32.2%. Racer said friend.tech has been ostracized and isolated in the Base community and has been labeled "negative speculation."

This tense relationship made friend.tech want to find another way out. However, since then, the development of friend.tech has stagnated. When it was once glorious, the platform had more than 100,000 users just two weeks after its launch on August 10, 2023; however, by July 2024, the number of daily users was less than 100.

Breaking the circle for the second time: Farcaster users surged by

200,000 in a single month, and Degen tokens surged a thousand times

Although friend.tech failed, another social product on Base, Farcaster, began to rise.

In February 2024, Farcaster began to explode in popularity, with users reaching 200,000 that month. This was Base's second breakthrough. According to Farcaster founder Dan Romero: Farcaster’s single-day active users reached 85,000 in April

Then Farcaster grew steadily, reaching 350,000 users in May; 500,000 users in June; 600,000 users in August (the real number of daily active users should be between 4,000 and 50,000)...and by 2025 On January 24, Farcaster’s total number of users reached nearly 800,000, and protocol revenue reached US$2.53 million. Although Farcaster's daily active users have changed greatly over time, it has been accumulating more users and waiting for the next opportunity to arise.

Farcaster itself has experienced two commendable breakthroughs. The first time was between February and April 2024. Degen tokens surged a thousand times, and FDV once reached nearly US$1 billion. This makes the Farcaster ecosystem impress many traders.

However, at the end of April, the cryptocurrency market began to peak and plummet, and Degen tokens also lost half of their value. Farcaster also stopped growing rapidly and entered a period of adjustment.

Breaking the circle for the third time: three US$1 billion tokens

appeared, becoming the biggest “dark horse” of the new public chain

From March to April 2024, Solana led the meme wave in the entire crypto market. Under this wave, Base has become the largest public chain outside Solana to receive massive funds.

During this period, billion-dollar market value tokens such as Aero, Brett, and Degen appeared on Base, successfully catching the funds overflowing from the Solana meme craze. At the same time, it surpassed Blast in TVL and became the third largest L2 on Ethereum after Arbitrum and OP.

During this period, Base not only became the "second largest meme center" after Solana, but also became the third largest L2 after Arbitrum and OP. In just half a year, Base became the biggest dark horse in the encryption world.

Breaking the circle for the fourth time: surpassing Arbitrum and becoming

the largest L2 on Ethereum

In August 2024, Base surpassed Arbitrum and became the truly largest L2 in Ethereum.

According to the author's statistics, from August 2023 to August 2024, the Base protocol's total revenue reached US$70 million; the Arbitrum protocol's revenue was US$60 million, the OP protocol's revenue was US$30 million; Scroll's US$40 million; and ZKSync's US$45 million.

In addition, whether it is on-chain revenue, the number of transactions, or the number of active addresses and other important indicators, Base far surpasses other L2s and has become the de facto largest L2 in Ethereum. This is the fourth time that Base has broken the circle. .

Breaking the circle for the fifth time: Base launched cbBTC, attracting

US$2.4 billion in capital inflows

Base launched cbBTC in September 2024. Backed by Coinbase's more than 60 billion US dollars in Bitcoin reserves, its TVL reached US$170 million within a week of its launch. It competed with WBTC for the cake. This was its fifth time breaking through the circle.

As of January 22, 2025, the cbBTC market size reached US$2.4 billion, with 200,000 holders. This number is still growing rapidly. The current market share of WBTC is around US$13 billion, and cbBTC is rapidly approaching this figure.

The sixth time to break the circle: the rise of Clanker ecology, the

emergence of three $50 million tokens

In November 2024, the Clanker ecosystem emerged, and the three meme coins in the ecosystem, LUM, ANON, and Clanker, successively reached US$50 million. Once again catching the largest overflow of funds outside of Solana, Base's application-oriented meme culture gradually formed. This is the sixth time Base has broken through the circle.

However, as the narrative of AI Agent further developed, funds on Base gradually poured in from the Clanker ecosystem to the Virtuals ecosystem. The liquidity on Base is not enough to support the two large ecosystems, and the Clanker ecological token is gradually declining.

The seventh time to break the circle: AI Agent wave, Base competes with

Solana for the first time

The rise of the Virtuals ecosystem supports five US$100 million AI Agent tokens. During the same period, Solana also had five AI Agent tokens exceeding $100 million.

In previous competitions, Base has always been in the "second place" position. It surpasses many public chains, but it has never been able to match Solana's massive funds. However, in this round of narrative of AI Agent, Base finally stands on the same level as Solana.

In January 2025, as the market value of Virtuals tokens reached US$5 billion in a short time, five AI Agent tokens with more than US$100 million appeared in the Base ecosystem, including aixbt and other tokens whose current market value still exceeds US$500 million. Base managed to compete with Solana. This was Base's seventh time breaking the circle.

write at the end

Base was established less than a year and a half ago, but it has surpassed other established public chains time and time again, first Blast, OP, then Arbitrum, and now Solana. In the AI ​​Agent wave, Base has even shown momentum to rival Solana.

Although Base is still far away from Solana in terms of liquidity, Virtuals, with a market capitalization of up to US$5 billion, has once again seen Base successfully increase the liquidity limit of its leading projects.

In these seven times of breaking the circle, Base has well caught the massive influx of funds after the passage of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024 and the flood after Trump was elected as the new U.S. president in November 2024. A number of tokens with market values ​​exceeding US$100 million have emerged, including Degen, Aero, Brett, Moonwell, Clanker, Virtual, AIXBT, and Luna, becoming the public chain with the most opportunities after Solana. What can be expected is that this is not the last time that Base will break the circle. In 2025, Base will have more products that break the circle.