The Rise of the Base Ecosystem and Future Outlook

Since the end of May 2025, the Base ecosystem has experienced a significant growth period. User daily active addresses, total locked value ( TVL ), and daily trading volume have all shown a rapid upward trend. This wave of growth is mainly driven by the continuous hype around several popular topics within the ecosystem, attracting widespread market attention. From a macro perspective, with the potential improvement of the regulatory environment, Base may become a more favored choice for traditional institutions.

Recent data shows that the number of active addresses in the Base ecosystem has experienced exponential growth, reaching a historic high of 3.6 million. Meanwhile, the total locked value has surged from $2.8 billion in May to nearly $4 billion, returning to the peak levels of the 2024 bull market. On-chain transactions have also been exceptionally active, with the average daily transaction count nearing 9 million since May, reaching the highest level of the 2024 bull market.

Popular Projects in the Base Ecosystem

Virtual: Innovative New Mechanism Ignites the Market

Virtual is one of the most notable projects in the Base ecosystem recently. Its unique new token issuance mechanism has quickly attracted a large amount of capital and user participation, becoming the core representative of the current new token issuance narrative in the Base ecosystem. The price of VIRTUAL skyrocketed from $0.5 in mid-April to a high of $2.5 in early June, an increase of up to 400%.

The main advantages of the Virtual New Share Mechanism include:

• Extremely low financing price
• Token Linear Unlocking Model
• Low-risk participation mechanism
• Reduce the possibility of project teams running away.

However, as the platform's popularity increased, early users frequently adopted a "buy and sell immediately" strategy to obtain short-term high returns, leading to significant selling pressure on new projects. To address this issue, Virtual introduced a "green lock mechanism," which imposes a mandatory lock-up period for new buyers. Although this mechanism helps to curb early selling and extend the project lifecycle, it also significantly alters the original speculative logic, resulting in a phased decline in market enthusiasm.

Kaito: Pioneer of the Attention Economy

As a leading project in the "Information Finance (InfoFi)" sector, Kaito's price has risen from $0.79 to a peak of $2.41 since May, an increase of nearly 205%. Kaito's core highlight lies in its Yaps module, which incentivizes users to create high-quality content around popular projects by "tokenizing attention" on the content published by users on social platforms.

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 distribution, and project screening. This model, anchored in content as a value point, brings a new narrative to Base that is distinct from traditional DeFi, opening up new imaginative spaces in the integration of social and financial tracks.

The Future Development Trends of Coinbase and Base

In June 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Stablecoin Act, establishing a legislative framework for dollar stablecoins. Against this regulatory backdrop, Coinbase, as a compliant exchange, began its three major initiatives:

1. Establishing a channel for interaction between Coinbase and on-chain assets through Base.
2. Issue compliant stablecoins on Base in collaboration with traditional financial institutions.
3. Building diversified application scenarios in the Base ecosystem

Open up the compliance asset onboarding 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 balances to interact with DApps on Base.

Build a compliant stablecoin system

Coinbase collaborates with traditional financial institutions to pilot the issuance of "compliant stablecoins" and "deposit tokens" on the Base chain. These assets are custodial by regulated banks and possess traditional financial attributes such as interest yield, legal protection, and bank insurance.

Build a diverse ecological scenario

To enhance the practical use cases of on-chain US dollars, Coinbase is simultaneously promoting the diversification of the Base ecosystem, covering on-chain US stock trading, global crypto payments, compliant DeFi, on-chain lending, as well as innovative applications such as AI Agent and InfoFi.

High-Potential Projects in the Ecosystem

1. Aerodrome: As an ecological leading DEX, it is expected to receive continuous institutional liquidity support.
2. Uniswap: The integration with Coinbase will bring more on-chain liquidity.
3. Keeta: A high-performance RWA public chain that may engage in deep collaboration with Base in the direction of RWA compliance in the future.
4. Creator Bid: The new version introduces mechanisms such as staking to bid on new projects, enhancing user participation.
5. Upside: The first social-oriented prediction market platform on Base, with the potential to become a new type of application.

Base is evolving from an active trading L2 network into a well-structured on-chain financial and content infrastructure. Although some hot projects face challenges in the short term, the narrative sustainability and institutional connectivity demonstrated by the Base ecosystem suggest it could become an important bridge for traditional capital entering Web3 in the long run. For investors, Base is not only a hot rotation track but also a key sample for observing the transformation path of the crypto industry towards "compliance, financialization, and practicality."