Reconstructing the on-chain narrative: What new story is the Base ecosystem telling?

1. Recent changes in the Base ecosystem

Since the end of May 2025, Base has ushered in a clear ecological "explosion period". The daily active addresses, TVL, and daily transaction volume of ecological users are all rising rapidly. The main reason for the recent explosion of the Base ecosystem is that multiple hot narratives have appeared in its ecosystem and have attracted considerable attention from the market. In addition, from a macro perspective, due to the listing of Circle, investors' optimism about the concept of stablecoins in the global stock market has spread, especially in the context of possible improvements in the regulatory environment. Base may become a more popular choice for traditional institutions.

• Active user growth: The number of active addresses has been growing exponentially, reaching a record high of 3.6M recently.

• TVL grows rapidly: Base’s total locked value rose from $2.8 billion to a high of nearly $4 billion in May, returning to the highest point of the 24-year bull market.

• On-chain transactions are active: the average daily number of transactions since May has been close to 9 million, reaching the highest point in the 24-year bull market.

2. Recent popular projects in the Base ecosystem

1.Virtual: pumpfun+Bn Alpha new issuance mechanism ignites market enthusiasm

Among the many hot projects in the Base ecosystem, Virtual is undoubtedly one of the most popular projects in the market recently. With its innovative new issuance mechanism, it quickly attracted a large amount of funds and user participation, becoming the core representative of the current Base ecosystem new issuance narrative. The price of VIRTUAL has risen from $0.5 in mid-April to a high of $2.5 in early June, an increase of 400%. The core advantages of Virtual's new issuance are:

• Extremely low financing price: Each new project raises funds at a market value of 42,425 virtuals (US$224,000), so users can participate in financing at an extremely low price, and the potential profit margin after the project is launched is huge.

• Token linear unlocking: Unlike MEME on PumpFun, Virtual's new projects are not fully unlocked after the opening, but are unlocked in batches with a transparent token economic model like VC coins. In addition, in order to prevent the project party from dumping the market, the raised funds are not directly handed over to the project party, but are all injected into the initial liquidity pool.

• Low risk of new projects: If the project in which the user participates fails to raise funds successfully, the full amount will be returned to the user. In addition, Virtual only releases a few new projects a day, so the quality is generally higher than MEME, and the risk of user participation is very low.

• Reduce the probability of Rug by the project party: Virtual sets a handling fee of 1%, of which 70% is returned to the project party. This incentive model motivates the project party to increase trading activity rather than short-term cashing out, forming a virtuous ecological closed loop.

However, as the popularity of the platform increased, early users frequently obtained short-term high returns through the strategy of selling new projects as soon as they were launched, causing huge selling pressure on new projects and undermining the stability of the overall ecosystem. To this end, Virtual launched the "Green Lock Mechanism" in mid-June, setting a mandatory lock-up period for new users, during which they were not allowed to sell the tokens they received. If they violated the rules, their points accumulation would be suspended. Although this mechanism helps to curb early selling and extend the life cycle of the project, it also significantly changes the original speculative logic. Users' profit cycle is forced to lengthen, capital efficiency decreases, and market enthusiasm has experienced a phased ebb. Virtual's price entered a downward channel in mid-June, falling from its high to $1.69, a drop of more than 37%.

2. Kaito: Leader in the Attention Track

Kaito is the leading project in the "InfoFi" track. Since May, the price of Kaito has risen from $0.79 to a high of $2.41, an increase of nearly 205%. The highlight of Kaito's mechanism lies in its Yaps module, which "tokenizes the attention" of the content posted by users on X, and encourages users to create high-quality content around popular projects (such as Berachain, Monad, Initia, etc.), thereby building a Web3 communication mechanism driven by content. This mechanism has greatly mobilized community participation, and with weekly airdrops and ranking rewards, users can both "voice" and "monetize", while attracting a large number of content creators and opinion leaders to settle in, effectively driving the prosperity of social and narrative content on Base.

In addition, Kaito launched the Yapper Launchpad system based on point ranking and the AI-driven information network Kaito Connect, which realized the collaborative closed loop of content contribution, point distribution, and project screening. Users can not only obtain airdrop qualifications and platform governance rights through Yaps, but also participate in project list voting and high-quality content incentives, forming a unique "invest while creating" logic. Kaito Connect provides an open InfoFi network that everyone can participate in, so that ordinary users can also get due rewards for their information contributions. This model with content as the value anchor brings a new narrative to Base that is different from traditional DeFi, and opens up new imagination space in the social and financial integration track.

3. Future development trends of Coinbase and Base

In June 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Stablecoin Act, which established a legislative framework for the U.S. dollar stablecoin. The passage of the bill marks the first time that regulators have affirmed the compliance status of digital assets in legal form. Under this regulatory background, Coinbase, as a compliant exchange in the United States, began its three major layouts. The first step is to open up the interactive channel between Coinbase and on-chain assets through Base, making it a compliant on-chain transaction entry. The second step is to cooperate with traditional financial institutions to issue compliant stablecoins based on Base, so that traditional financial funds can be put on the chain. The third step is to establish the content of the Base ecosystem, including on-chain U.S. stocks, compliant payments, DeFi, AI Agent, etc., to attract traditional capital inflows.

Step 1: Open up the channel for compliant assets to enter the chain - introduce the Coinbase account balance into the Base chain

Coinbase is currently promoting the deep integration of its centralized trading platform with the Base chain. It has launched the Coinbase Verified Pools feature, where KYC users can directly use the Coinbase account balance to interact with the DApp on Base without the cumbersome wallet switching and on-chain transfer process. It has announced Uniswap and Aerodrome as its on-chain DEX platforms. Although this feature is still in its early stages, this direction is highly consistent with the current trend of multiple centralized trading platforms promoting on-chain and off-chain integration.

Step 2: Build a compliant stable currency system with traditional financial institutions: Promote the on-chain transfer of fiat currency funds

On the basis of opening up the on-chain entrance, Coinbase further joined hands with Wall Street financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase to pilot the issuance of "compliant stablecoins" and "deposit tokens" (such as JPMD) on the Base chain. Such assets are directly held by regulated banks and have traditional financial attributes such as interest income, legal protection and bank insurance, far exceeding the trust basis of general crypto stablecoins. This move means that not only can the US dollar be circulated on the chain, but also the core asset structure in the traditional financial system will be digitally migrated, and Base has evolved into the on-chain carrier layer of traditional finance.

Step 3: Build a diversified ecological scenario - activate the demand for the use of US dollars on the chain

In order to enhance the actual use scenarios of the US dollar on the chain, Coinbase simultaneously promotes the diversification of the Base ecosystem, covering multiple dimensions:

• On-chain U.S. stock trading: We are applying to the SEC for permission to put U.S. stocks on the blockchain, and plan to launch tokenized stock products that allow users to trade U.S. stocks such as Apple and Tesla on the blockchain, breaking the geographical restrictions of the traditional securities market;

• Ecological linkage with Circle: The launch of Circle Payments Network (CPN) provides USDC with a stronger clearing infrastructure. As one of the largest stablecoins in the Base ecosystem, it enables DeFi, RWA or cross-border payment projects on Base to directly access the global stablecoin payment channel, helping Base become an important part of the compliant on-chain financial infrastructure.

• Global Crypto Payments: Cooperate with Shopify and Stripe to embed stablecoins such as USDC into the e-commerce checkout process and expand the practical application of on-chain US dollars in cross-border settlement;

• Compliant DeFi and on-chain credit: Guide DeFi projects such as Aerodrome, Uniswap, and Spark to operate in compliance through KYC modules, and provide stable and auditable on-chain transactions, lending and other services for institutions and retail investors;

• New on-chain gameplay such as AI Agent and InfoFi: Create more innovative on-chain gameplay to attract traditional users to participate.

Through these three major initiatives, Coinbase not only built a "high-speed channel" for the entry of compliant assets on the chain, but also built a complete value closed loop for the US dollar stablecoin - from fiat currency on the chain, to on-chain storage, access and circulation, and then to the implementation of real usage scenarios.

Ecological medium and high potential projects

• Aerodrome: With Coinbase's plan to integrate the Base chain DEX into the main application, Aerodrome, as the leader of the ecosystem, is expected to obtain continuous and stable institutional liquidity support, further promoting its trading volume, TVL and platform revenue growth. At the same time, AERO token holders will receive higher revenue distribution and staking returns due to the growth of platform revenue, thereby stimulating more users to participate in staking and governance, forming a positive feedback mechanism.

• Uniswap: Similar to Aerodrome, as another DEX integrated by Coinbase, Uniswap will also gain more on-chain liquidity, increase the potential revenue of its platform and thus increase the value of the token UNI.

• Keeta: A high-performance RWA public chain, featuring tens of millions of TPS and sub-second transaction confirmation. It has passed independent stress testing to verify the authenticity of its performance and has received support from many institutions including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Although the price of the coin has undergone a significant adjustment, its token is expected to be launched on Base in the future to carry out in-depth cooperation with Base in the direction of RWA compliance.

• Creator Bid: Collaborated with Kaito to launch version 2.0, adding new mechanisms such as staking to increase user engagement and expand creator economic gameplay. The new mechanism has driven the BID token to break through the historical market value to $150 million in a short period of time, showing the initial effect of the new mechanism in terms of user engagement and community enthusiasm. Drawing on the early performance of similar projects (such as Virtual), Creator Bid still has the potential for continued growth as its functions are iterated.

• Upside: Upside is the first social-oriented prediction market platform on Base. Users can convert X/Twitter, articles, and video links into "content tokens" and vote and trade with USDC. The platform is currently in the second quarter of testing, with about 20,000 followers in the X community. Although tokens have not yet been issued, Upside has attracted early users to participate with its novel design of social prediction + investment mechanism, and has the potential to become a new application on Base with both liquidity and content attributes.

Currently, Base is gradually evolving from an "actively traded" L2 network to a "structurally complete" on-chain financial and content infrastructure. From the innovative mechanisms of Virtual and Kaito to the construction of the on-chain dollar value system promoted by Coinbase, although some hot projects face challenges of declining popularity and user speculation in the short term, from a long-term perspective, the narrative continuity and institutional linkage capabilities demonstrated by the Base ecosystem mean that it may become a bridge for traditional capital to enter Web3 in the next stage. For investors, Base is no longer just a hot spot rotation track, but also an important sample for observing the transformation path of the crypto industry to "compliance, financialization, and practicality."