The Transformation of the Base Ecosystem and Emerging Narratives

Recent Developments in the Base Ecosystem

Since the end of May 2025, the Base ecosystem has shown a significant prosperous trend. The number of daily active addresses, total locked value ( TVL ), and daily trading volume have all shown a rapid growth trend. This explosive growth is mainly driven by the continuous speculation on several popular themes within the ecosystem, attracting widespread attention from the market. From a macro perspective, the positive sentiment surrounding stablecoins in the global stock market is spreading, especially against the backdrop of a potentially improving regulatory environment, making Base a more favored choice for traditional institutions.

Main growth indicators:

• The number of active users has grown exponentially, recently hitting a historic high of 3.6M.
• The total locked value surged from 2.8 billion USD to nearly 4 billion USD in May, returning to the peak of the 2024 bull market.
• Since May, the average daily trading volume has approached 9 million times, reaching the highest level of the bull market in 2024.

Analysis of Popular Projects in the Base Ecosystem

Virtual: The innovative new issuance mechanism triggers a market frenzy.

Virtual is one of the most attention-grabbing projects in the Base ecosystem recently, and its innovative new project mechanism has quickly attracted substantial capital and user participation. The price of the VIRTUAL token skyrocketed from $0.5 in mid-April to a peak of $2.5 in early June, with an increase of up to 400%.

The core advantages of the Virtual IPO mechanism:

1. Extremely low financing price: Each new project raises funds at a market value of 42,425 virtual (approximately $224,000), providing users with an attractive entry price.
2. Token linear unlocking: Adopting a transparent token economic model similar to VC coins, unlocking in batches.
3. Low-risk participation: Unsuccessful fundraising projects will be fully refunded, and only a small number of high-quality projects will be released daily.
4. Project Incentive Mechanism: Set a 1% transaction fee, of which 70% is returned to the project party, encouraging long-term operation rather than short-term cashing out.

However, as the platform gained popularity, early users frequently adopted the "buy and sell immediately" strategy to obtain short-term high returns, leading to immense selling pressure on new projects. In response, Virtual introduced the "Green Lock Mechanism" in mid-June, implementing a mandatory lock-up period for new buyers. This measure, while helping to curb early sell-offs and extend the project lifecycle, significantly altered the original speculative logic, resulting in longer profit cycles for users, decreased capital efficiency, and a periodic decline in market enthusiasm.

Kaito: Pioneer of the Attention Economy

As a leading project in the "Information Finance (InfoFi)" sector, Kaito's price has surged from $0.79 to a high of $2.41 since May, an increase of nearly 205%.

The core highlight of Kaito lies in its Yaps module:

1. Tokenize the content that users post on social media platforms as "attention tokens".
2. Encourage users to create high-quality content around popular projects.
3. Build a content-driven influence communication mechanism for Web3.
4. Increase community engagement through weekly airdrops and leaderboard rewards.
5. Attract a large number of content creators and opinion leaders to settle in.

In addition, Kaito has 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 obtain qualification for airdrops and platform governance rights through Yaps, participate in project leaderboard voting and quality content incentives, forming a unique "create while investing" logic.

Future Development Strategy of Coinbase and Base

With the U.S. Senate passing the GENIUS Stablecoin Act to establish a legislative framework for U.S. dollar stablecoins, Coinbase, as a compliant exchange, has initiated three major strategic layouts:

Step 1: Open the compliance asset on-chain channel

Coinbase has launched the "Verified Pools" feature, allowing KYC users to interact directly with DApps on Base using their Coinbase account balance, simplifying the wallet switching and on-chain transfer process.

Step 2: Build a compliant stablecoin ecosystem

Coinbase collaborates with financial giants like JPMorgan Chase to pilot the issuance of "compliant stablecoins" and "deposit tokens" (such as JPMD) on the Base chain. These assets are custodied by regulated banks and possess traditional financial attributes such as interest earnings, legal protections, and bank insurance.

Step 3: Build a diversified ecological scenario

To activate the actual demand for on-chain dollars, Coinbase is promoting the diversification of the Base ecosystem:

• On-chain US stock trading: Apply for on-chain access for US stocks, planning to launch tokenized stock products.
• Integration with the Circle ecosystem: Strengthen the clearing infrastructure of USDC through the Circle Payments Network (CPN).
• Global Crypto Payments: Collaborate with e-commerce platforms to embed stablecoins into the checkout process.
• Compliant DeFi and On-Chain Credit: Guiding DeFi projects to operate in compliance through KYC modules.
• AI Agent and InfoFi: Developing innovative on-chain applications to attract traditional users.

Base Ecosystem High-Potential Projects

1. Aerodrome: As an ecological leading DEX, it is expected to gain continuous institutional liquidity support.
2. Uniswap: Expected to gain more on-chain liquidity after integration with Coinbase.
3. Keeta: A high-performance RWA public chain that has received support from multiple institutions and may collaborate with Base in the future on RWA compliance.
4. Creator Bid: Launched version 2.0 in collaboration with Kaito, introducing new mechanisms to enhance 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 gradually evolving from an active trading L2 network into a well-structured on-chain financial and content infrastructure. Although some hot projects face the challenge of declining popularity in the short term, the narrative sustainability and institutional linkage capabilities exhibited by the Base ecosystem make it a likely bridge for traditional capital to enter Web3 in the long run. For investors, Base is not only a hot rotation track but also an important sample for observing the transformation of the crypto industry towards compliance, financialization, and practicality.