Behind the verbal battle of Base: In the past 3 months, net capital inflow exceeded 2.5 billion USD, and TVL surpassed 14.2 billion USD, overtaking S

Author: Frank, PANews

For a long time, many public chains have liked to label their competitors as Solana, but it seems that no one has truly posed a threat to Solana. However, recently, Solana's co-founder Toly seems quite willing to debate with Base's co-founder. Meanwhile, in recent times, the Base ecosystem has experienced explosive growth in various data metrics, not only leading several indicators among L2s but also surpassing Solana in terms of TVL and capital inflow.

It seems that Base might be the biggest potential competitor in Solana's mind? PANews reviews Base's recent data and compares it with Solana to see if Base's rise is a real threat or just another "wolf is coming" scenario.

The Ongoing War of Words Between the Two Co-founders

On January 6, Solana co-founder Toly commented on social media, claiming that Base's development has not brought real growth to the Ethereum ecosystem, but rather that Coinbase is siphoning off Ethereum's ecosystem through Base. In response, Base founder Jesse countered on social media, stating that Base and Ethereum do not have a zero-sum competitive relationship; like other L2s, Base is developing within the overall roadmap of Ethereum, and as Base grows, Ethereum also grows stronger.

Toly then likened the situation to the competition between Google and Microsoft, which both contributed to Linux, but in terms of value capture, they are separate. Therefore, no Fortune 500 company uses a single accounting method to attribute Base's activities to Ethereum; instead, they all attribute it to Coinbase. The $2.15 million in revenue generated by Base only paid $59,000 to the Ethereum mainnet.

It seems that Toly is defending ETH for not capturing value from Base, but in reality, this debate may not be about the competition between Base and Ethereum, but rather about the competition between Solana and Base. Although there are many competitors to Solana in the market, such as Sui, Aptos, or Hyperliquid, positioning themselves as competitors to Solana, from the statements of the Solana team, it appears that their biggest competitor may indeed be Base.

As early as December, Pudgy Penguins announced the issuance of tokens on Solana, creating a historical high of 66.9 million transactions in a single day for the Solana network after going live. During this process, Jesse publicly welcomed Pudgy Penguin and its token PENGU, an action seen by the community as a direct attempt to poach business from Solana.

In addition, the two have exchanged barbs in various discussions, such as when Yuga Labs co-founder Garga.eth criticized the Ethereum ecosystem, which displeased Jesse, while Toly added fuel to the fire in the comments: "I absolutely do not oppose ETH becoming the best currency on Solana." Previously, Jesse had also made several comments comparing Base and Solana.

Base's TVL and Capital Inflow Surpass Solana

Behind the war of words between the two is the undercurrent of data between Base and Solana. PANews compared several data metrics of Base and Solana over the past year, showing that while Base's overall data still lags behind Solana, its growth rate is significantly ahead. If this growth rate continues, Base could potentially surpass Solana in data metrics within 1 to 2 years.

PANews selected several commonly used metrics for public chain comparison, such as daily active addresses, transaction counts, and TVL. The data selected ranges from one year ago to January 10, 2025.

First, let's look at Base's changes. A year ago, Base had approximately 338,000 daily transactions, around 61,200 daily active addresses, and a TVL of about $830 million. At that time, these figures represented 1.48%, 11.29%, and 63.85% of Solana, respectively.

As of January 10, 2025, Base's data has changed to approximately 11.1 million daily transactions, around 811,200 daily active addresses, and a TVL of about $14.2 billion. Currently, these three data points compared to Solana are: 17.59%, 12.88%, and 167.06%.

The annual growth rates for these three metrics for Base are 3184.02%, 1225.49%, and 1610.84%. In contrast, during the same period, Solana's growth rates for these three metrics were 176.75%, 1062.36%, and 553.85%.

It can be seen that despite a year of development, Base still has a significant gap in transaction counts and daily active data compared to Solana. However, in terms of TVL, Base has already completed the surpassing. Interestingly, to celebrate this data, Jesse and other key team members shaved their heads during a live stream on January 9.

In terms of growth rates for other data, Base's momentum is also more aggressive than Solana's. If both parties maintain their current growth efficiency, Base may also surpass Solana in transaction counts within a year.

Beyond these metrics, a more important indicator has also been quietly changing. For most of the past year, Solana has been the network with the highest capital inflow among public chains. However, recent data from the past three months shows that Base has become the highest net inflow public chain with $2.5 billion, while Solana ranks second with a net inflow of $900 million.

The main change in this data likely occurred recently, with the total net inflow over the past year being approximately $3.8 billion, meaning that the net inflow of $2.5 billion in the past three months accounts for 65% of the annual total.

From Elections to Virtuals, Base is Steadily Closing In with AI

From the details of the changes, this is indeed the case. Base's TVL seems to have experienced significant growth starting from November 3. However, this is not unique to Base; Arbitrum also saw a wave of rapid development during the same period.

The reason behind this wave of growth may primarily stem from the overall market growth following the U.S. elections and Trump's victory. In the past month, the main reason for Base's attention has been the emergence of a product in the MEME sector, which has long been in competition with Solana, that can finally compete: Virtuals Protocol.

After various networks launched Pump.fun clones, most fell silent. However, Virtuals Protocol has finally seized the opportunity of AI Agents, becoming the hottest one-click publishing platform for AI Agents, giving birth to several AI Agent tokens like aixbt and G.A.M.E, each with a market cap exceeding $100 million.

According to Dexscreener data, on January 11, the DEX trading volume on Solana was $6.88 billion, with 5,324 new trading pools created in 24 hours, while Base's trading volume was $2.12 billion, with 2,673 new trading pairs launched in 24 hours. The gap between the two in the MEME sector is gradually narrowing, and Base seems to be the only public chain network that can approach Solana's popularity in MEME.

However, Sui also experienced a brief surge previously, but after the hype subsided, it inevitably fell back into silence. Base's relative advantage lies in its stronger capital retention effect compared to Sui, so as long as the TVL does not experience a cliff-like drop, this popularity may still be maintained.

By comparing the data, it can be seen that Base is becoming Solana's strongest competitor, but the issue is that Base still lacks its own governance token, making it difficult for the market to price it. The absence of a public chain token also allows the Virtuals Protocol to gain more capital spillover effects on the Base public chain. Perhaps to address this issue, on January 4, Base developer Jesse Pollak tweeted that Coinbase is considering offering tokenized COIN stock to its U.S. users on the Base network.

If this goal can be achieved, the significance may not only be that the RWA sector has gained another important asset, but also that the value brought by Base's development can finally be more directly reflected in Coinbase's stock price. For investors who can only participate in cryptocurrency trading, this could also be a way to indirectly participate in Base's governance and enjoy dividends. Based on Base's current data performance, the market cap converted to tokens should be above $10 billion. On January 11, Coinbase's market cap was approximately $64.7 billion, ranking behind BNB and SOL in the cryptocurrency space. It remains to be seen whether, once the on-chain capital inflow of Base is added, Coinbase's market cap can surpass that of BNB and SOL.