By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
The surge in trading volume and TVL highlights the growing interest and adoption of the Base protocol. The network currently sits as the sixth largest layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum.
Base, a layer 2 scaling solution based on the Ethereum ecosystem, has experienced massive growth, with activities on the platform surging to new heights. According to data from the decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator DefiLlama, daily activities on Base soared 51% to reach $356 million within 24 hours.
The protocol’s total value lock (TVL) was not left behind. The Coinbase-backed network achieved a new milestone with a TVL of $770.65 million at press time. Last year in December, its TVL stood close to $735 million.
Activities on Base Soars Following Dencun Upgrade
Base’s growth has been positive since its entrance into the crypto market in August 2023. On Wednesday, the network recorded daily transactions of around 1.65 million.
That same day, the blockchain analytics platform Dune revealed that nearly 130,000 new users were registered on the protocol.
Earlier this month, the Base network saw substantial activity growth following the introduction of Dencun on March 14. Two days after the upgrade, Dune reported that the protocol onboarded 666,866 new users, showing a notable increase of 3,200% from the average for the days leading up to Dencun.
Similarly, the network recorded over 2 million transactions. Before the Dencun upgrade, Base only saw about 440,000 daily transaction volumes. The daily transaction limit initially rose above 1.1 million a day after the Ethereum upgrade before eventually hitting 2,064,920.
The growth was attributed to a significant decrease in fees on the Base network after the Dencun upgrade. Blockscout data disclosed that average transaction fees on the platform have dropped by over 60% since the upgrade.
In terms of on-chain activities, the network has so far surpassed other rivals such as Arbitrum and Optimism.
Not Without Challenges
The surge in trading volume and TVL highlights the growing interest and adoption of the Base protocol. The network currently sits as the sixth largest layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum.
According to industry tracker L2beat, the network, which uses an optimistic rollup framework to service various decentralized applications, has a market share of 4.1% of all the layer 2 scaling solutions in the crypto market.
Despite substantial growth over its seven months of existence, the network is not without issues. Last year, Base faced different hurdles, including a major outage on September 5, 2023, a few weeks after its launch.
Activities on the protocol halted for about 45 minutes before they were restored. Base explained on X then that the outage was not caused by external factors or hacking attempts. Instead, the issue originated from the network itself.
The Base network also experienced other challenges, such as rug pulls and exit scams, as developers leveraged its popularity to create shitty projects that ended up vanishing with investors’ funds.
