Base Ecosystem Explosion: New Narratives Restructure On-Chain Finance and Content Landscape

Since the end of May 2025, the Base ecosystem has entered a significant growth period. User activity, total locked value ( TVL ), and daily transaction volume have all shown a rapid upward trend. This explosion is mainly due to the successive hype of several popular narratives within the ecosystem, attracting widespread market attention. On a macro level, due to the global stock market's optimistic sentiment towards the concept of stablecoins, especially against the backdrop of a potentially improving regulatory environment, Base is expected to become a favored choice for traditional institutions.

Data shows that the number of active addresses in the Base ecosystem has experienced exponential growth, recently reaching a historic high of 3.6M. The total locked value surged from $2.8 billion to nearly $4 billion in May, returning to the peak levels of the 2024 bull market. Meanwhile, since May, the average daily trading volume has approached 9 million transactions, hitting the highest point of the 2024 bull market.

Analysis of Popular Projects in the Base Ecosystem

Virtual: The innovative initial mechanism ignites the market

Virtual has quickly become one of the most notable projects in the Base ecosystem thanks to its unique new issuance mechanism. The price of its token soared from $0.5 in mid-April to a peak of $2.5 in early June, an increase of 400%. The core advantages of Virtual include:

1. Extremely low financing price: New projects raised funds with a market value of 42,425 Virtual (approximately $224,000), providing users with a low-cost participation opportunity.
2. Token linear unlocking: Adopting a transparent token economic model similar to VC coins, unlocking in batches.
3. Low-risk new investment: Full refunds for projects that fail to raise funds, and only a small number of high-quality projects are issued daily.
4. Reduce Rug Probability: Set a 1% fee, with 70% returned to the project party, encouraging long-term operation.

However, as the platform's popularity increased, early users frequently obtained short-term high returns through the "new listing and selling" strategy, leading to significant selling pressure on new projects. To address this, Virtual launched the "Green Lock Mechanism" in mid-June, imposing a mandatory lock-up period for new listing users. Although this measure helps extend the project lifecycle, it also significantly alters the original speculative logic, resulting in a phased decline in market enthusiasm. The price of Virtual has fallen from its peak to $1.69, a drop of more than 37%.

Kaito: Pioneer of the Attention Economy

Kaito, as a leading project in the "Information Finance (InfoFi)" sector, has seen its price increase from $0.79 to a high of $2.41 since May, an increase of nearly 205%. Its core highlight is the Yaps module, which incentivizes users to create high-quality content around popular projects by "tokenizing attention" on content published by users on social platforms. This mechanism has greatly enhanced community participation, and combined with weekly airdrops and leaderboard rewards, it has attracted a large number of content creators and opinion leaders.

Kaito has also launched the Yapper Launchpad system based on points ranking and the AI-driven information network Kaito Connect, achieving a collaborative closed loop of content contribution, points allocation, and project selection. Users can not only obtain airdrop eligibility and platform governance rights through Yaps, but also participate in project ranking voting and quality content incentives. This model, which uses content as a value anchor, brings a narrative different from traditional DeFi to Base, opening up new imaginative space in the track of social and financial integration.

The Future Development Layout of Coinbase and Base

In June 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Stablecoin Act, establishing a legislative framework for dollar-pegged stablecoins. In this regulatory context, Coinbase, as a compliant exchange, initiated three major strategic layouts:

1. Open up the interaction channel with on-chain assets through Base, serving as a compliant on-chain trading entry.
2. Collaborate with traditional financial institutions to issue compliant stablecoins on Base, promoting the on-chain of traditional funds.
3. Build diversified content in the Base ecosystem, including on-chain US stocks, compliant payments, DeFi, AI Agents, etc., to attract traditional capital inflow.

open up the compliance asset on-chain channel

Coinbase is promoting the deep integration of its centralized trading platform with the Base chain, launching the Coinbase verification pool feature, which allows KYC users to directly use their Coinbase account balance to interact with DApps on Base. Certain trading platforms and DEX platforms have been announced as its on-chain trading platforms.

Build a compliant stablecoin system

Coinbase partners with traditional financial institutions to pilot the issuance of "compliant stablecoins" and "deposit tokens" on the Base chain. These assets are custodied by regulated banks and possess traditional financial attributes such as interest income, legal protection, and bank insurance, significantly enhancing the trust foundation of on-chain assets.

Build a diverse ecological scenario

To enhance the practical application of on-chain US dollars, Coinbase is actively promoting the diversification of the Base ecosystem:

• On-chain US stock trading: Plans to launch tokenized stock products, allowing global users to trade US stocks on-chain.
• Global Crypto Payments: Collaborate with e-commerce platforms to integrate stablecoins into the checkout process, expanding cross-border settlement applications.
• Compliant DeFi and on-chain lending: guiding DeFi projects to operate in compliance through KYC modules, providing stable and auditable on-chain financial services.
• AI Agent and InfoFi: Creating innovative on-chain applications to attract traditional users to participate.

High-Potential Projects in the Ecosystem

1. Aerodrome: As an ecological leading DEX, it is expected to gain continuous support from institutional liquidity, driving the growth of trading volume, TVL, and platform revenue.

2. Uniswap: As another integrated DEX, it will gain more on-chain liquidity, enhancing the platform's potential returns.

3. Keeta: A high-performance RWA public chain, focusing on tens of millions of TPS and sub-second transaction confirmation, and may collaborate deeply with Base in the direction of RWA compliance in the future.

4. Creator Bid: Launched version 2.0 in collaboration with Kaito, adding new mechanisms such as staking for new projects to enhance user participation and expand creator economy gameplay.

5. Upside: The first social-oriented prediction market platform on Base, where users can convert social content into "content tokens" and trade them, demonstrating the potential to become a new type of application.

Base is evolving from a transaction-active L2 network into a structurally complete on-chain financial and content infrastructure. Although some hot projects face short-term challenges, in the long run, the narrative continuity and institutional connectivity exhibited by the Base ecosystem make it likely to become an important bridge for traditional capital to enter Web3. For investors, Base is not only a track for hot rotation but also a key sample for observing the "compliance, financialization, and practicality" transformation path of the cryptocurrency industry.