Will Base Chain Explode After Surpassing Solana in Net Capital Inflows?
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Will Base Chain Explode After Surpassing Solana in Net Capital Inflows?
Starting with Coinbase, let's talk about the reasons for being bullish on Base.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: ZENECA
Translation: Baiclockchain
In this article, I’ll share why I believe Base remains extremely important, the areas I’m currently watching on Base, and how you can practically get involved. I’ll provide an ecosystem overview and highlight some metrics that further convince me the “Base era” is approaching.
That said, before diving in, it’s worth stating the obvious: much of what I discuss here—and indeed most projects in the current crypto market, especially those tied to Memecoins—are extremely high-risk, massively inflated, and nearly everything could drop 95%-100% from current levels. I’m trading this market just like anyone else—selling near perceived tops and gradually locking in profits as prices rise. In fact, I’ve already cashed out part of my gains.
Don’t be a stubborn “diamond hands” holder, nor let moral pressure from others stop you from selling. Ultimately, do what’s best for you. If your investment has grown into life-changing money, sell it, cash out, and change your life.
I’ve seen too many people ride large sums all the way back down from peak to zero, so I want to state these risks upfront. The views below are entirely my own—they may be wrong, poorly timed, or flawed in other ways. Now more than ever, “Do Your Own Research” (DYOR) is critical.
With that out of the way, let’s start with Coinbase—the reason I’m bullish on Base.
1. Reason One: Coinbase Is a Major Player
Coinbase is one of the largest and most influential cryptocurrency exchanges globally, and a key institution in the crypto industry. Whenever a Memecoin gets listed on Coinbase, global Memecoin investors rejoice—because they know it usually means the token’s price will (generally) go up. That’s because Coinbase offers regular users (or average crypto enthusiasts) a convenient gateway to trade these tokens.
Coinbase’s mission is to increase economic freedom worldwide and bring 1 billion people on-chain. While they’d be happy if any chain reached that number, clearly, they’d prefer those users land on their own Base chain.
I think most people still underestimate the power of Coinbase’s marketing engine and its significance as a company.
As one of the largest U.S.-based exchanges, Coinbase not only holds major commercial importance but also frequently represents the entire crypto industry in legal and political battles.
Last year, when the SEC decided to sue Coinbase, it was one of the rare moments in crypto where almost everyone united around a single cause. Nothing brings people together like a common enemy. Sure, there were dissenters—but screw them, they’re irrelevant and barely worth mentioning.
One more thing about Coinbase: the company seems genuinely driven from top to bottom, with excellent people throughout. I’m not saying other exchanges can’t be like this, but Coinbase radiates a particularly positive energy.
In short, Coinbase is a massive player. They have their own Layer 2 blockchain—this alone makes it likely to be a major event worth watching.
And when we talk about Base, we must mention Ethereum—a blockchain everyone loves to hate. Still, I believe an ETH season is coming too…
2. Reason Two: The ETH Season
By the way, Ethereum is also a major player. I know mocking Ethereum has become trendy on social media lately, but honestly, I think those voices are just a few loud opinions on Twitter. The truly influential people aren’t spending all day on Twitter. Of course, this applies to all blockchains, but especially to Ethereum (partly because many have moved to Farcaster).
I won’t deny Ethereum has had some failures. Over the past 12–18 months, it has “lost” to Solana (SOL) in many aspects. It’s slow, expensive, and due to the proliferation of L2s (and even L3s), the ecosystem feels fragmented and clunky.
Even so, Ethereum remains the second-largest blockchain by market cap—nearly four times larger than its nearest competitors.
Among the 328 blockchains tracked by DeFi Llama, Ethereum still accounts for over 50% of total value locked (TVL). What a “dead chain,” right? (Sarcasm.)
Clearly, Ethereum has underperformed nearly every other asset this year. But I believe that’s about to change.
This is the ETH/BTC chart over the past roughly five years. Obviously, Ethereum hasn’t done well these past two years! But anyone with even basic knowledge of charts, markets, and investing knows this is exactly when you buy—not sell.
18–24 months ago would’ve been the time to swap ETH for BTC or SOL.
I’m not saying you must now swap BTC or SOL for ETH, but it’s safe to say the timing to do so is far better now than it’s been in years.
Yes, yes, I’m bringing it up again—it’s such a cliché, but it’s just too accurate and relevant. The best time to buy SOL was during the peak panic after the FTX collapse.
I admit I was a bit late catching the magic of SOL in this cycle (relatively speaking, I entered around $40). And as a stubborn ETH bull, I probably held longer than a skilled trader should have. But I’ve had good reasons for staying bullish on ETH—many of which I explain in this article.
Most complaints about ETH stem from user friction—high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. L2s solve many of these issues, and they’re rapidly improving in their weaker areas. Which brings us to…
3. Reason Three: User Friction Is Disappearing Fast
One key reason for Solana’s recent success is its focus on consumer apps and end-user experience. They minimize usage friction, and it’s undeniable that the barrier for ordinary people to use Solana is far lower than on other major blockchains. Low fees and fast speeds matter, but mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom and apps like Moonshot have made a huge difference in onboarding new users.
Add in the popularity of Memecoins, especially the Pump Fun protocol, and the network effects from these combined factors make Solana’s success unsurprising.
But I believe Base is now seeing a similar trend—or is very close. For example, just today, Phantom announced support for Base:
Over the past few weeks, across dozens of Discord/TG chats, I’ve lost count of how many times someone said: “Ah, I only have SOL in my wallet—I don’t know how to use Base.”
I think this is just the beginning. We’ll see more protocols and apps supporting Base, and more native Base applications emerging.
Also, many people still remember the painful gas fees on Ethereum in 2021 and MetaMask’s poor UX—but haven’t yet experienced the ease of using Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, or Coinbase Wallet natively on Base (which offers a solid 4.7% native yield on USDC holdings).
4. Reason Four: Strong Team
In traditional investing, I always believe in betting on great people. Base has a highly capable and reliable team making things happen:
Brian Armstrong casually meets with Trump to discuss crypto policy. By the way, Brian is truly an impressive figure—read this 2020 article (yes, sorry, I’m asking you to read more), recall what the world was like then, and compare most big tech companies’ political stances at the time to the bold path Brian led Coinbase on.
Then there’s Jesse Pollak—the face of Base—who leads both Base and Coinbase Wallet.
I’ve saved dozens of his tweets because I wanted to showcase his character—especially how he’s shaped Base into what it is today. Scrolling through his Twitter feed is endless gold. I recommend checking it yourself, but for the lazy among you (i.e., 99% of you—including me if I were in your shoes), here are a few of my favorites:
Jesse on a 21-day global tour visiting builders and leaders, spreading the word:
About targeting Instagram and TikTok:
About understanding meme culture (video recommended):
And more. These are just two standout individuals driving Base forward. Backing this team feels very secure.
5. Reason Five: Strong Data
Data shows significant activity growth and strong capital inflows on Base. To me, the two most important indicators for predicting whether a chain might succeed are: 1) the number of builders/developers creating apps, and 2) whether capital is flowing in.
Looking back three months, Base’s net capital inflow is nearly on par with Solana’s:
Over the past week, Base has outperformed every other platform by a wide margin:
Trading volume is steadily rising, with a recent uptick:
In recent days, many AI agents on Base have gained heavy traction on Twitter:
Clearly, traffic and attention are shifting toward Base. Whether this is sustainable or just temporary remains to be seen. Many claim it’s fleeting and Solana will retain most attention this cycle. I clearly disagree—but I’m not arrogant enough to believe I’m right and others are wrong.
The data looks good, but data can be temporary.
6. Reason Six: Airdrop Speculation
To be clear, this is pure speculation—I have no insider info, and I don’t know if there will ever be a Base token. They’ve explicitly said there won’t be, but then again, Optimism and many other chains once said the same.
However, given the significant shifts in legal and regulatory landscapes, I can’t completely rule out the possibility of an airdrop at some point in the future.
That said, I don’t focus much on this. Personally, I treat it as a bonus, not something to obsess over. I recommend simply using the chain normally and experimenting—since that’s often the best way to qualify for an airdrop if one ever happens.
Alright, those are my six reasons for being bullish on Base and believing Base Szn might be upon us. Now let’s dive into specific areas worth watching—and where I spend my time on Base:
7. Base Ecosystem Highlights
1) Virtuals Protocol
You’ve probably heard of Virtuals by now—if not through my tweets/retweets, then through discussions elsewhere online. Simply put, Virtuals is a launchpad for on-chain AI agents. In their own words:
It’s seen slow, steady adoption over the past few months, began picking up a few weeks ago, and has recently gone parabolic.
I probably don’t need to tell you that AI is a major theme in crypto right now—and likely to remain a dominant narrative and industry for the foreseeable future. We’ve already seen AI memecoins like GOAT and ZEREBRO explode on Solana, along with many other promising projects.
Currently, top AI tokens and agents on Virtuals are still just a fraction of Solana’s giants. But if you look at capital flows and anticipate an ETH season + Base season, focusing on the Virtuals ecosystem seems like one of the best places to be.
My two personal favorites (and largest holdings) are AIXBT and VADER, alongside the native token VIRTUAL. I hold tokens for about 20 agents on the platform, and many others I believe will perform well—even more so given their already sizable market caps.
You can discover newly launched Virtual AI agent tokens (and even launch your own). I recommend reading their full whitepaper to fully understand the protocol.
Additionally, here’s a great thread from last month that gives a simple, high-level overview of Virtuals: [link].
2) Farcaster
Base and Farcaster are closely linked. While Farcaster supports multiple chains, Base has been dominating usage lately. As shown in this chart, Base accounted for 60%–80% of all Farcaster transactions across chains for most of this year, and in recent days, that figure has exceeded 95%.
Recently, two Farcaster integrations have drawn significant attention: clanker and anoncast.
Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that mints tokens for users. Anyone can @-mention it to request a token creation. It uses its own funds to create liquidity pools and generates fees for creators. People call it Base’s “Pump Fun,” though I don’t think it’s a perfect analogy.
This site is a good place to track new clanker token launches.
Anoncast is a cool technology enabling users to post content on Farcaster (and even Twitter) with 100% anonymity via zk-proofs (something I wrote about last year). You can post through this website, and holding the anon token (a utility tag) is required.
Things are moving fast as developers and experimenters try new implementations—Farcaster is definitely worth exploring deeply.
I recommend watching this interview where ThreadGuy speaks with Dan Romero, one of Farcaster’s founders.
3) “Old” Coins, Memes, Classic Memes
While most attention is currently focused on the above areas—especially AI-related tokens—I also believe it’s worth paying attention to older coins that have existed on Farcaster for a while and have loyal communities.
There are too many to list, but sorting by market cap on Dexscreener’s Base page will reveal some solid old-school memecoins.
I suspect that if we do enter a true Base Season, attention may eventually shift from AI/Farcaster content to cute animals and classic memes (or perhaps both will happen in parallel).
While the Virtuals ecosystem has recently exploded, many of these older coins have dipped during the same period. Remember the old adage: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” This might be the perfect time to watch what others are ignoring.
4) Other Areas to Watch
I was going to write a long section here, but I just came across an excellent tweet covering 10 cool apps to try, 10 ways to earn on-chain yield, 10 communities to join, and 10 articles to read. Since it covers everything so well, I’ll skip the repetition and just share the tweet:
https://x.com/davidtsocy/status/1861507879792189769?s=46&t=sQ0QVUQyoiZQeVyh-DXZpg
Countless other exciting things are being built on Base—most of which I obviously can’t cover. The above are just the areas I’ve personally focused on recently, but I encourage you to explore and find what interests you.
Alright, that’s my main watchlist. Finally, a few logistics notes.
How to Get Started on Base
I’ve received many questions about how to begin operating on Base, so here’s a quick starter guide and some tips:
If you have funds in an Ethereum wallet, use platforms like Relay or Bungee to bridge to Base. These are user-friendly, low-cost, and typically take about a minute.
If you have SOL, you can also use Relay or directly select the bridge option within the Phantom wallet.
For trading on Base, I personally trade manually 90% of the time (without bots), though some bots like BullX and Photon do support Base—and more likely will soon. (Disclosure: these are referral links.)
The main decentralized exchanges (DEXs) for trading on Base are Aerodrome and Uniswap. Personally, I prefer using the DEX aggregator LlamaSwap, which finds the cheapest route and best rates for you.
Trading Virtuals tokens works a bit differently—all AI agents can only be traded using the native VIRTUAL token. The easiest way is through their website, but you can also swap Virtuals tokens on LlamaSwap by selecting KyberSwap as the DEX.
For a wallet that supports all Base/EVM tokens, I personally use and recommend Rabby. Rainbow Wallet also comes highly recommended. Coinbase has its own wallet too, but honestly, I find it less feature-rich than the other two (or maybe I just haven’t learned it well enough).
8. Final Thoughts: SOL vs. Base, and General Views on Blockchain Competition
I’ve always felt that intense blockchain rivalry is quite unnecessary. Personally, I see competing chains as friendly rivals—like the U.S. and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand. We joke around—teasing Solana for going down occasionally, Ethereum for insane gas fees, and Cardano… well, for being itself.
But ultimately, if you’re here to make money (as I suspect 99% of people are), you should stay open-minded, experiment, and go with the flow.
If you care more about the future of finance, decentralization, and censorship resistance than profit, then by all means, stand firm in your beliefs. In this space, you’ll encounter extreme views everywhere: Bitcoin maxis who think everything besides Bitcoin harms the industry; Ethereum purists who see Solana as toxic; Solana fans who view Ethereum and Base as harmful.
Even among Bitcoin maximalists, some hate ETFs and MicroStrategy, while others love them.
I say this to emphasize: no matter which side you’re on, there will always be a group calling you foolish and dismissing your views. Honestly, that’s life—you can let it bother you, or like me, accept it, go with the flow, follow the money, follow the builders, follow the attention, and most importantly: follow your own curiosity.
I suggest you try doing the same. The most valuable alpha isn’t found by following my curiosity, my posts, or anyone else’s footsteps—it’s by pursuing your own curiosity, digging deep, and thinking independently.
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@Zeneca
