Ethereum layer-2 network Base’s total value locked (TVL) has doubled in less than a month, reaching $2.13 billion, while commentators say it could become the next epicenter for memecoins.
Base notched $1 billion in TVL on Feb. 27, 226 days after its launch in August. However, the network managed to breach the $2 billion market just 25 days later on March 23, according to data from L2 Beat.
USD Coin (USDC) is the largest token by natively minted value at $600 million, while Ether (ETH) is the largest token by canonically bridged value at $798 million.
Some industry pundits believe that memecoins could drive the next wave of adoption on Base and potentially take some of the memecoin market share away from Solana
“Solana had a crazy #memecoin season [and] thousands of millionaires were made overnight,” said X user Dami-Defi to its 62,100 followers on March 24.
“But now attention is shifting to another chain - #BASE,” Dami-Defi added.
We've recently witnessed one of the craziest meme season on Solana.
— Xremlin (@0x_gremlin) March 21, 2024
Those who were early and savvy enough have earned thousands or even millions of dollars.
Now, the attention slowly shifts to Base memes, and we can potentially see a crazy run there too. pic.twitter.com/QabqsLX4r4
Degen (DEGEN) and Base God (TYBG) are among the largest Base memecoins, boasting market caps of $143.4 million and $65.9 million, according to CoinGecko — though these are still far below other more recently popular memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB).
The Solana memecoin craze has been headlined by Dogwifhat (WIF), which has attained a market cap of $2.7 billion since it launched in early December, according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, Book of Memes (BOME) and Slerf (SLERF) have already amassed market caps of $2.7 billion since launching on Solana earlier this month.
Normie (NORMIE), Briun Armstrung (BRIUN) and Brett (BRETT) are among the other Base memecoins that are being speculated on by traders.
Related: Memecoin trader nets $8.9M profit in an hour, raising ‘insider’ allegations
Other pundits, such as Andrew Forte, director of business development at blockchain solutions firm Dappd, are bullish on Base because its creator firm Coinbase is building a native smart contract wallet that will allow its 100 million registered users to trade on Base without needing to remember seed phrases or private keys.
“There are going to be several billion dollar memecoins on base that will get an easy listing on Coinbase and goto all the normies,” said X user Wizard of SoHo to his 97,000 followers.
“Fading Base SZN” is a “bad” idea, they added.
Base recently notched a record 2 million transactions in a day on March 16 following the Dencun upgrade on Ethereum.
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