Reconstructing On-Chain Narratives: What New Story is the Base Ecosystem Telling?
1. Recent Ecological Changes in Base
Since the end of May 2025, Base has entered a noticeable ecological "explosion period." The daily active addresses, TVL, and daily transaction volume of ecological users are all rapidly increasing. The main reason for the recent explosion in the Base ecosystem is the emergence of multiple popular narratives that have been hyped in succession, attracting significant market attention. Additionally, from a macro perspective, the optimism surrounding the concept of stablecoins in the global stock market has spread due to Circle's IPO, especially against the backdrop of a potentially improving regulatory environment, making Base a more favored choice for traditional institutions.
Active user growth: The number of active addresses has increased exponentially, recently reaching a historical high of 3.6M.
Rapid TVL growth: The total locked value of Base rose from $2.8 billion in May to a peak of nearly $4 billion, returning to the highest point of the 2024 bull market.
On-chain transaction activity: Since May, the average daily transaction count has approached 9 million, reaching the highest point of the 2024 bull market.
2. Recent Popular Projects in the Base Ecosystem
- Virtual: The pumpfun + Bn Alpha new project mechanism ignites market enthusiasm
Among the various hot projects in the Base ecosystem, Virtual is undoubtedly one of the most market-attended projects recently. With its innovative new project mechanism, it quickly attracted a large amount of capital and user participation, becoming the core representative of the current new project narrative in the Base ecosystem. The price of VIRTUAL has risen from $0.5 in mid-April to a peak of $2.5 in early June, an increase of 400%. The core advantages of Virtual's new project mechanism include:
Extremely low financing price: Each new project raises funds with a market value of 42,425 virtual (approximately $224,000), allowing users to participate in financing at a very low price, with significant potential profit space after the project launches.
Token linear unlocking: Unlike MEME on PumpFun, Virtual's new project tokens are not fully unlocked after launch but are unlocked in batches with a transparent token economic model similar to VC tokens. Additionally, to prevent project teams from dumping, the raised funds are not directly handed over to the project team but are all injected into the initial liquidity pool.
Low new project risk: If the projects that users participate in do not successfully raise funds, the full amount will be refunded to users. Moreover, Virtual only launches a few new projects each day, ensuring that the quality is generally higher than MEME, resulting in very low risk for users.
Reducing the probability of rug pulls by project teams: Virtual sets a 1% transaction fee, with 70% returned to the project team. This incentive model motivates project teams to enhance trading activity rather than cashing out in the short term, forming a positive ecological loop.
However, as the platform's popularity rises, early users frequently adopt a strategy of selling immediately after the new project launches to gain short-term high returns, leading to significant selling pressure on new projects and undermining the overall stability of the ecosystem. To address this, Virtual introduced a "green lock mechanism" in mid-June, imposing a mandatory lock-up period for new project users during which they cannot sell the tokens obtained. Violators will have their points accumulation suspended. Although this mechanism helps suppress early selling and extend project lifecycles, it also significantly alters the original speculative logic. Users' profit cycles are forced to lengthen, capital efficiency declines, and market enthusiasm experiences a temporary retreat. The price of Virtual entered a downward channel in mid-June, falling from its peak to $1.69, a decrease of over 37%.
2. Kaito: Leader in the Attention Economy
Kaito is the leading project in the "Information Finance (InfoFi)" sector. Since May, Kaito's price has risen from $0.79 to a peak of $2.41, an increase of nearly 205%. The highlight of Kaito's mechanism is its Yaps module, which tokenizes user-generated content on X, incentivizing users to create high-quality content around popular projects (such as Berachain, Monad, Initia, etc.), thereby building a content-driven influence mechanism in Web3. This mechanism greatly stimulates community participation, combined with weekly airdrops and leaderboard rewards, allowing users to both "voice" their opinions and "monetize" their contributions, effectively attracting a large number of content creators and opinion leaders to join, thus promoting the prosperity of social and narrative content on Base.
Additionally, Kaito has launched the Yapper Launchpad system based on points ranking and the AI-driven information network Kaito Connect, achieving a synergistic loop among content contribution, points distribution, and project selection. Users can not only obtain airdrop eligibility and platform governance rights through Yaps but also participate in project voting and quality content incentives, forming a unique "create while investing" logic. Kaito Connect provides an open InfoFi network that everyone can participate in, allowing ordinary users to receive due rewards for their information contributions. This content-value anchored model brings a new narrative to Base that differs from traditional DeFi, opening new imaginative spaces in the intersection of social and financial sectors.
3. Future Development Trends of Coinbase and Base
In June 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Stablecoin Act, establishing a legislative framework for USD stablecoins. The passage of this bill marks the first time that regulators have legally affirmed the compliant status of digital assets. Against this regulatory backdrop, Coinbase, as a compliant exchange in the U.S., has begun its three major layouts. The first step is to connect Coinbase with on-chain assets through Base, making it a compliant entry point for on-chain trading. The second step is to collaborate with traditional financial institutions to issue compliant stablecoins based on Base, allowing traditional financial capital to go on-chain. The third step is to establish content within the Base ecosystem, including on-chain U.S. stocks, compliant payments, DeFi, AI Agents, etc., to attract traditional capital inflows.
First step, opening the channel for compliant assets to enter the chain---bringing Coinbase account balances onto the Base chain
Coinbase is currently promoting the deep integration of its centralized trading platform with the Base chain and has launched the Coinbase Verified Pools feature, allowing KYC users to directly use their Coinbase account balances to interact with DApps on Base without cumbersome wallet switching and on-chain transfer processes. Uniswap and Aerodrome have been announced as its DEX platforms for on-chain trading. Although this feature is still in its early stages, this direction is highly consistent with the current trend of several centralized trading platforms promoting the integration of on-chain and off-chain.
Second step, co-building a compliant stablecoin system with traditional financial institutions: promoting fiat capital to go on-chain
Based on the opening of the on-chain entry, Coinbase further collaborates with Wall Street financial giants like JPMorgan to pilot the issuance of "compliant stablecoins" and "deposit tokens" (such as JPMD) on the Base chain. These assets are directly custodied by regulated banks, possessing traditional financial attributes such as interest income, legal protection, and bank insurance, far exceeding the trust foundation of general crypto stablecoins. This move signifies that not only can USD circulate on-chain, but the core asset structure within the traditional financial system will also undergo digital migration, thus evolving Base into the on-chain carrier layer for traditional finance.
Third step, constructing diverse ecological scenarios---activating the demand for on-chain USD usage
To enhance the actual usage scenarios of on-chain USD, Coinbase is simultaneously promoting the diversification of the Base ecosystem, covering multiple dimensions:
On-chain U.S. stock trading: Applying to the SEC for permission to bring U.S. stocks on-chain, planning to launch tokenized stock products that allow users to trade U.S. stocks like Apple and Tesla on-chain, breaking the geographical limitations of traditional securities markets;
Ecological linkage with Circle: The launch of the Circle Payments Network (CPN) provides a stronger clearing infrastructure for USDC. As one of the largest stablecoins in the Base ecosystem, it enables DeFi, RWA, or cross-border payment projects on Base to directly access global stablecoin payment channels, helping Base become an important part of compliant on-chain financial infrastructure.
Global crypto payments: Collaborating with Shopify and Stripe to embed stablecoins like USDC into e-commerce checkout processes, expanding the practical application of on-chain USD in cross-border settlements;
Compliant DeFi and on-chain credit: Guiding DeFi projects like Aerodrome, Uniswap, and Spark to operate compliantly through KYC modules, providing stable and auditable on-chain trading, lending, and other services for institutions and retail investors;
New on-chain gameplay like AI Agents and InfoFi: Creating more innovative on-chain gameplay to attract traditional users.
Through these three major initiatives, Coinbase has not only built a "fast track" for compliant assets to enter the chain but also constructed a complete value loop for USD stablecoins—from fiat capital going on-chain, to on-chain deposits and circulation, and finally to the realization of actual usage scenarios.
High-Potential Projects in the Ecosystem
Aerodrome: With the integration of Base chain DEX into the main application through Coinbase's plan, Aerodrome, as the leading project in the ecosystem, is expected to receive continuous and stable institutional liquidity support, further driving its trading volume, TVL, and platform revenue growth. Meanwhile, holders of the AERO token will benefit from higher revenue distribution and staking returns due to the growth in platform revenue, stimulating more users to participate in staking and governance, forming a positive feedback mechanism.
Uniswap: Similarly to Aerodrome, as another DEX integrated with Coinbase, Uniswap will also gain more on-chain liquidity, enhancing its platform's potential revenue and increasing the value of the UNI token.
Keeta: A high-performance RWA public chain, boasting millions of TPS and sub-second transaction confirmations, has recently validated its performance authenticity through independent stress testing and received support from multiple institutions, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Although the token price has undergone significant adjustments, its token is expected to engage in deep cooperation with Base in the direction of RWA compliance in the future.
Creator Bid: Partnering with Kaito to launch version 2.0, introducing new mechanisms like staking and new projects to enhance user participation and expand creator economy gameplay. The new mechanism has already driven the BID token to surpass a historical market cap of $150 million in a short period, demonstrating the initial effects of the new mechanism on user participation and community enthusiasm. Drawing on the early performance of similar projects (like Virtual), Creator Bid still holds growth potential as it iterates its features.
Upside: Upside is the first social-oriented prediction market platform on Base, allowing users to convert X/Twitter posts, articles, and video links into "content tokens," and vote and trade using USDC. The platform is currently in the second quarter of testing, with approximately 20,000 followers in the X community. Although it has not yet issued tokens, Upside has attracted early user participation with its novel design combining social prediction and investment mechanisms, showing potential to become a new application on Base that combines liquidity and content attributes.
Currently, Base is gradually evolving from a "transaction-active" L2 network into a "structurally complete" on-chain financial and content infrastructure. From the innovative mechanisms of Virtual and Kaito to the construction of the on-chain USD value system promoted by Coinbase, although some hot projects face challenges of declining enthusiasm and user speculation in the short term, from a long-term perspective, the narrative sustainability and institutional linkage capabilities demonstrated by the Base ecosystem suggest that it may become a bridge for traditional capital to enter Web3 in the next phase. For investors, Base is no longer just a hot rotation track but an important sample for observing the transformation path of the crypto industry towards "compliance, financialization, and practicality."
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