What is Base? Why builders choose it over other L2s

Where should you deploy your next onchain app? If you've spent any time in builder chats or scanning L2 leaderboards, you already know the answer everyone's giving. But hype isn't a reason to pick a chain.

Here's what Base actually is, what the numbers say in February 2026, and whether it deserves your deploy.

Base in 60 seconds

Base is an Ethereum L2 rollup built on Optimism's OP Stack, incubated by Coinbase — 110M+ verified users, publicly traded (NASDAQ: COIN).

That user base matters more than any technical spec. You deploy on Base, and 110M people with funded Coinbase accounts are one tap away from your app. No other L2 has that pipeline. No other L2 is backed by a company that enterprise partners already trust.

No native token. No airdrop farming. No speculation-driven ecosystem. When you see usage numbers on Base, that's real demand — not farmers chasing a future airdrop.

Your transactions settle on Ethereum mainnet, so you inherit Ethereum's security. The cost: $0.001 per transaction. The speed: roughly 2 seconds.

In April 2025, Base hit Stage 1 rollup status — independent state verification, ahead of most competing L2s on the security timeline.

The numbers (February 2026)

Not projections. Not "potential." Current reality:

$10B in TVL
26M+ monthly active users
100M+ monthly transactions
10M+ daily operations (L2Beat)
$0.001 average transaction fee

There is no BASE token. Zero incentive programs. Every one of those 26M monthly users showed up because something on Base was worth using.

How L2 rollups work (quick primer)

If you already understand rollups, skip to the comparison.

Ethereum's mainnet processes roughly 15 transactions per second. That's not enough for consumer apps. L2s solve this by:

Executing transactions off-chain (on the L2)
Posting compressed transaction data back to Ethereum (for security)
Using Ethereum as the settlement layer (your funds are secured by ETH stakers)

There are two flavors:

Type	How it proves validity	Examples
Optimistic Rollups	Assumes transactions are valid; allows a challenge period for fraud proofs	Base, Optimism, Arbitrum
ZK Rollups	Generates cryptographic proofs that transactions are valid	zkSync, StarkNet, Scroll

Base is an optimistic rollup. In practice, the difference matters less than you'd think for most apps. Both types give you cheap, fast transactions secured by Ethereum.

Base vs other L2s

Here's an honest comparison. Every chain has tradeoffs.

Factor	Base	Arbitrum	Optimism	zkSync Era
Backing	Coinbase (110M users)	Offchain Labs (VC-backed)	Optimism Foundation	Matter Labs (VC-backed)
Stack	OP Stack	Nitro (custom)	OP Stack	zkEVM
Token	None	ARB	OP	ZK
Avg tx fee	$0.001	$0.01-0.10	$0.001-0.01	$0.01-0.10
EVM compatibility	Full	Full	Full	Near-full
Mainnet since	Aug 2023	Aug 2022	Dec 2021	Mar 2023
Rollup stage	Stage 1	Stage 1	Stage 1	Stage 0
Unique advantage	Coinbase distribution + Base App	Largest DeFi TVL	Superchain vision	ZK proof security

When to pick Base

You need real users, not DeFi degens farming your airdrop
Your users shouldn't know they're using crypto (Base App handles wallets, gas, onboarding)
You want $0.001 transactions so micro-interactions are viable
You want 110M Coinbase accounts as your distribution channel

When to pick something else

Deepest DeFi liquidity today: Arbitrum
Building Superchain infrastructure: Optimism
Need ZK proof guarantees: zkSync or StarkNet
Building on Solana: wrong article

For most consumer and social apps, Base's distribution advantage outweighs technical differences between L2s. The OP Stack is battle-tested. Fees are negligible. The real question is whether users can find your app — and no other L2 puts 110M funded accounts one tap away.

Who's building here (and what's actually working)

Talk is cheap. Here's what's live and generating real volume on Base in 2026:

DeFi

Aerodrome — Billions in monthly volume. The ve(3,3) DEX that became Base's liquidity backbone. Launching a token on Base? You'll use Aerodrome.
Morpho — Base's leading lending protocol. Apollo Global Management (one of Wall Street's largest firms) announced acquisition of Morpho tokens in February 2026. When a $600B+ asset manager buys into your lending protocol, that's institutional validation you can't fake.
Uniswap V3 — Heavily used alongside Aerodrome. The standard for concentrated liquidity.

AI agents

Virtuals Protocol — $477M+ processed through autonomous agents. Virtuals created the concept of "Agentic GDP" — measuring real economic output from AI agents operating onchain. Their Agent Commerce Protocol lets agents pay agents for services. The category leader.
Bankr — Tag @bankr on X, launch a token. Users reply to tweets to trade. Runs on Doppler bonding curves. Grok (xAI's AI) launched $DRB through Bankr in March 2025 — the moment AI and crypto collided publicly.

Base App — This replaced Coinbase Wallet entirely. A mobile app (called "Base" on the App Store/Play Store) mixing social features, mini apps, and trading. Built on Farcaster and Zora infrastructure. Developers can build mini apps using MiniKit SDK (npx create-onchain --mini) that run inside Base App and other Farcaster clients. This is the primary consumer entry point to Base now.
Farcaster — The main social protocol on Base. Farcaster Frames have largely evolved into Base App mini apps, but the social graph and protocol remain foundational infrastructure.
Checkr — Real-time token insights on Base. Useful for builders tracking their own token and the broader market.

Infrastructure

Chainlink — Oracles live on Base
The Graph — Indexing support
Pyth — Price feeds
OnchainKit / Base SDK — The official React component library from Coinbase for building on Base. Includes MiniKit for Base App mini apps. npx create-onchain scaffolds a full project.
Doppler — Onchain protocol for launching tokens through price discovery auctions with configurable bonding curves. Used by Zora, Paragraph, Noice, and powers Bankr under the hood.

DeFi (continued)

BMX — Perpetuals/derivatives DEX on Base. For traders who want leverage.

Onchain commerce and payments

x402 protocol — An open standard for internet-native payments using HTTP 402 status codes. One line of server middleware, a wrapped fetch on the client, and any API endpoint becomes paywalled with USDC. SDKs in TypeScript, Python, and Go. Network and currency agnostic. This is one of the most important new primitives on Base — see our payments guide for the full breakdown.
Coinbase Commerce — Merchant payments settling on Base.

The pattern: DeFi infrastructure, AI agents, social apps, payments. Builders on Base are shipping products for real users — not governance tokens nobody votes on.

What Coinbase actually gives you (and what it doesn't)

What you get:

110M accounts one tap away. Base App handles wallets, gas, and onboarding. Your user doesn't need MetaMask or ETH in their wallet.
Fiat on-ramp. Bank account to ETH on Base. No CEX withdrawal dance.
Passkey auth. Users sign transactions with Face ID. No seed phrases.
x402 payments. HTTP-native payment infrastructure — paywall any API with USDC.
Marketing reach. Base gets featured inside the Coinbase app. That's millions of eyeballs you didn't pay for.

What you don't get:

Guaranteed users. Coinbase opens a door. You still need a product worth walking through.
Free money. Grants exist, but you apply like everyone else and prove traction first.
A moat. Base is permissionless. Your competitor deploys next to you with the same tools.

No token. That's the point.

Every other major L2 has a token. Arbitrum has ARB. Optimism has OP. Base has nothing.

That means no airdrop farmers inflating your DAU with fake activity. No governance drama. No mercenary capital. When 26M users show up monthly on Base, they showed up because something was worth using.

The tradeoff: Arbitrum and Optimism can bribe liquidity with token incentives. Base can't. The data says it doesn't need to — top 3 L2 by transaction volume, zero token incentives.

Getting started on Base

If you're convinced (or at least curious), here's your path:

For developers

Set up your dev environment — Foundry, Hardhat, RPC endpoints, testnet faucets
Deploy your first contract — Step-by-step with real code
Integrate Base App / Smart Wallet — If you're building consumer-facing

For product people

Study what's working — Look at top Base apps by daily active addresses on Dune dashboards
Join the builder community — The Farcaster /base channel and Base App are where builders coordinate
Track onchain activity — Use tools like Sonarbot to monitor wallet behavior and smart contract activity on Base in real-time, or Checkr for token-specific insights

Get funded

Base has real funding pathways for builders at every stage:

Builder Rewards Program (builderscore.xyz): 2 ETH distributed weekly to active builders. No minimum project size.
Builder Grants: 1-5 ETH retroactive grants for shipped projects. Apply at paragraph.com/@grants.base.eth.
OP Retro Funding: For public goods. Track impact on atlas.optimism.io.
Base Batches (basebatches.xyz): The founder track. Mentorship, resources, Coinbase Ventures intros. Recurring cohorts.

For the full breakdown, see our ecosystem grants guide.

Key links

Base RPC: https://mainnet.base.org
Base Sepolia testnet: https://sepolia.base.org
Block explorer: basescan.org
Bridge: bridge.base.org (also: Relay, ChangeNow, Across)
Docs: docs.base.org
Base App: base.org

The bottom line

Base is betting that the L2 with the best distribution wins. Technical differences between optimistic rollups are marginal. 110M Coinbase users one tap from your app is not.

$10B TVL. 26M monthly users. Sub-cent fees. Institutional money arriving (Apollo buying Morpho). Mature dev tooling (OnchainKit, MiniKit). Real ecosystem depth (Aerodrome, Virtuals, Bankr).

If you need real users — not DeFi power users, normal people — Base is where you build in 2026.

What are you going to ship?