Derrière la frénésie de « captation d'argent » de Base, quel est le véritable « levier » qui permet de stimuler la croissance de la valeur ?
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Derrière la frénésie de « captation d'argent » de Base, quel est le véritable « levier » qui permet de stimuler la croissance de la valeur ?
Offrir un levier technologique permettant à davantage d'institutions de s'implanter dans Web3.
Dédié à des analyses Web3 approfondies
Production｜OKG Research
Author｜Jason Jiang
Massive capital is flooding into Base. On-chain data shows that over the past month, Base has been the ecosystem with the highest net inflow of funds, reaching $750 million—far exceeding Solana’s同期 figure of around $300 million. At the same time, other metrics are also surging: daily transaction volume on Base has peaked above 11 million, accumulating over 1 billion on-chain transactions to date, while weekly active addresses have increased 20-fold since the beginning of the year, surpassing Arbitrum to become the L2 project with the highest TVL.
Popular projects on Base (Source: OKLink)
Base’s success stems from its ability to capitalize on trends and create “blockbusters,” but it also owes much to the backing of Coinbase: Base seamlessly integrates various products, users, and tools within the Coinbase ecosystem, enabling developers to rapidly build on-chain applications and reach over 100 million users and vast assets. This allows for broader migration of users and capital—a fundamental advantage and a natural edge compared to other L2s. Today, an increasing number of such well-supported projects like Base are entering the L2 arena.
Among these backed L2s, will one emerge as the next Base?
Despite growing criticism and skepticism toward L2s due to excessive infrastructure leading to fragmented liquidity and intensified competition for existing market share, new entrants remain undeterred. Numerous institutions continue joining the L2 race: DeFi veteran Uniswap launched its own L2, Unichain; Web2 tech giant Sony announced its L2 network Soneium... Just as the battle for liquidity remains unresolved, a new wave of high-profile, well-connected competitors has arrived.
Compared to established L2 projects, these newcomers are different.
Early native L2s such as Arbitrum and Optimism were designed primarily to address Ethereum’s technical and performance limitations—not application-level issues. These projects aimed to meet market demand for mainnet usage through lower gas fees and higher TPS. Their success hinges on a highly active main chain: only when the mainnet sees frequent use can the advantages of L2s manifest and their value be realized. However, Ethereum has faced internal and external challenges—while absolute figures still lead, growth has significantly lagged behind networks like Solana. As a result, even deeply engineered L2s dependent on Ethereum have found little room to demonstrate their potential.
In contrast, new L2 entrants—whether Base launched in August last year, or this year’s Uniswap and Sony—either bring existing applications and traffic, or offer significant potential in connecting Web2 scenarios. They are less reliant on Ethereum in terms of traffic, use cases, and ecosystem, and do not aim to replace Ethereum. Instead, they focus more on monetizing existing L2 technology to optimize and expand their own application ecosystems, gaining stronger competitive advantages.
Why choose L2? On one hand, modular rollup infrastructure has matured, with platforms like OP Stack drastically lowering the technical barriers to deploying L2s. One-click chain deployment is becoming a reality, without the need to bootstrap a new consensus network—making it a more cost-effective technical choice. On the other hand, Base’s success demonstrates that L2 projects can operate healthily without token-based financial incentives, offering clear regulatory compliance advantages that may attract more traditional institutions.
The second half of the battle begins: how to leverage the value "leverage" of L2?
Criticism and pessimism toward L2s today appear rooted in underwhelming market performance, but the deeper cause lies in a clear mismatch between technological advancement and application innovation during this cycle. It’s like building a highway with great effort, only to realize there are hardly any cars on the road—everyone is still riding bicycles. Under such conditions, the value of the highway naturally cannot be realized.
How to solve this? The most effective way is to accelerate application development within the L2 ecosystem, narrowing or even eliminating this timing gap, thus reigniting infrastructure demand and pushing the market into a virtuous cycle of “infrastructure-application-infrastructure,” thereby unlocking the value leverage of L2s.
As Sota Watanabe, SBL Director at Sony and founder of Astar Network, put it, “Due to the lack of touchpoints with average users and their feedback, the Web3 industry has historically been building products for itself.” But with institutions like Sony bringing business operations and resources, Web3 infrastructure and applications could finally break free from the echo chamber, evolving into real-world solutions that address genuine needs and deliver Web3 benefits to a broader Web2 audience.
At Ethereum’s developer conference in July, Vitalik also stated that “the biggest theme for Ethereum’s ecosystem in the next decade will be applications.” Today’s new L2 entrants are arriving precisely with applications in mind—and driven by them. While most native L2s continue competing on “technical narratives,” these newcomers are already building toll booths on the existing L2 highways and directing more vehicles onto the roads.
As L2 technology advances and matures, L1 blockchains may grow increasingly distant from everyday users, with L2s becoming the primary hubs for on-chain users and applications. According to OKG Research, over 90% of Ethereum’s transaction activity now occurs on L2 networks. More institutions—especially Web2 companies—are likely to adopt L2s as their gateway to building on-chain applications and participating in the Web3 ecosystem.
In this process, a new phase of the L2 battle centered on applications may begin. This time, it won’t just be about technical prowess, but also about resources and real-world use cases. These new L2 players, backed by powerful institutions and endowed with built-in traffic and scenario advantages, might outperform long-standing projects entrenched in technical battles, delivering surprises on the application front and unlocking the true value leverage of L2 innovation.
If spot ETFs for digital assets gave more investors access to Web3-era portfolio options, then L2s may provide more institutions with a Web3 'lever,' enabling Web3 not only to serve Web3 users but also to tap into Web2 markets, sparking new waves of application innovation.
*The content of this article is intended solely for market observation and trend analysis and should not be considered as specific investment advice.
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