Base, Coinbase’s incubated Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network, has seen surging adoption since it opened its doors to the public just a month ago. While the blockchain platform has gained significant traction, the pool of users and protocols have also witnessed significant expansion.
Evidence of this rapid growth, Base recently recorded the highest number of transactions in a single day.
Basic network records enormous activity in the chain in one day
According to data from IntoTheBlockBase has seen its daily transactions rise to a new record level. The blockchain platform registered a total of 1.88 million transactions on Thursday, September 14.
Lucas Outumuro, head of research at IntoTheBlock, revealed that Base recorded more transactions on the same day than the sum of Arbitrum and Optimism transactions (780,000 and 370,000 respectively).
Network costs are another metric that reflects the apparent increase in Base’s on-chain activity in recent days. Data from TokenTerminal showed that the blockchain generated more network costs than Arbitrum and Optimism.
Moreover, Base recorded its maximum transaction throughput last week. According to L2beat, the network recorded a significant 21.29 transactions per second (TPS) on Thursday, September 14.
This figure placed Base above other L2 chains and Ethereum in terms of transaction throughput. Nevertheless, the network remains in first place, with a current TPS of 19.58.
These achievements underscore the positive performance of the Coinbase-incubated network in recent weeks. Base has managed to stake a strong claim for a place among the top L2 blockchains, as evidenced by rising on-chain activity.
However, it is worth noting that Base still lags behind Arbitrum and Optimism in terms of total value locked (TVL). According to DefiLlamaBase has a TVL of almost $373 million, while Arbitrum and Optimism boast about $1.7 billion and $650 million, respectively.
What’s behind this latest wave of activity in the chain?
The latest surge in on-chain activity on the Base network is mainly tied to the renewed hype of the decentralized social network, Friend.tech.
IntoTheBlock has made this connection in one report, saying: “Interestingly, it’s not DeFi applications or NFT marketplaces that are driving Base’s surge in activity. Instead, a significant portion of usage can be attributed to a new social application, FriendTech.”
Friend.tech is a decentralized social media platform built on Base. It allows users to exchange ‘keys’ to X accounts (formerly Twitter) and communicate with social media personalities in a closed group chat format.
The Friend.tech platform, once declared dead by critics, has come back to life this past week. The decentralized application appears to be enjoying renewed interest from users, with TVL surpassing $30 million in recent days.
Friend.tech has experienced an increase in activity, breaking its trading volume record two days in a row. Meanwhile, the platform has seen a rise in withdrawal fees, which reached an all-time high of around $2 million on September 14.
Cryptocurrency total market cap on the daily timeframe | Source: TOTAL chart on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView