Many public chains have long labeled Solana as their competitor, but it seems that no one can truly pose a threat to Solana. However, recently, Solana's co-founder Toly seems very willing to debate with Base's co-founder. Meanwhile, Base's ecosystem has experienced explosive growth in various data aspects recently, surpassing Solana in several indicators such as TVL and capital inflow.
It seems that Base is the biggest potential rival in Solana's view? PANews reviewed Base's recent data and compared it with Solana to see if Base's rise is imminent or just another 'wolf is coming' scenario?
The two co-founders are constantly in a war of words.
On January 6, Solana co-founder Toly commented on social media, believing that Base's development has not brought real growth to the Ethereum ecosystem but that Coinbase is siphoning off the Ethereum ecosystem through Base. In response to this statement, Base founder Jesse countered on social media, stating that Base and Ethereum do not have a zero-sum competitive relationship, and like other L2s, Base is developing within Ethereum's overall framework. As Base grows, Ethereum is also growing.
Toly then metaphorically stated that the competition between Google and Microsoft contributed to Linux, but in terms of value capture, this is separate. Therefore, no Fortune 500 company in the U.S. uses a single accounting method to attribute Base's activities to Ethereum; instead, they all attribute it to Coinbase. The $2.15 million revenue generated by Base only pays $59,000 to the Ethereum mainnet.
It seems that Toly is speaking up for ETH for not capturing value from Base, but in reality, the debate may not be about competition between Base and Ethereum but rather 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 Solana team's statements, 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 the launch. During this process, Jesse publicly stated, 'I and the Base community will welcome Pudgy Penguin and its token PENGU with open arms,' an act that was seen by the community as an open attempt to steal business from Solana.
In addition, the two have been engaging in back-and-forth discussions on multiple topics, such as Yuga Labs co-founder Garga.eth's complaints about the Ethereum ecosystem, which drew Jesse's dissatisfaction, and Toly added fuel to the fire in the comments: 'Bridging ETH to Solana, I absolutely do not oppose ETH becoming the best currency on Solana.' Previously, Jesse has also made statements comparing Base and Solana multiple times.
Base TVL and capital inflow have surpassed Solana.
The back-and-forth debate between the two reveals the undercurrents of data between Base and Solana. PANews compared several data indicators of Base and Solana over the past year, and it can be seen that Base's overall data is still inferior to Solana, but Base's growth rate is comprehensively leading Solana. If this growth rate continues, Base may surpass Solana in data within 1 to 2 years.
PANews selected several commonly used indicators for comparison between public chains, such as daily active addresses, transaction counts, TVL, etc. The data selected ranges from a year ago to the changes as of January 10, 2025.
First, let's look at Base's changes. A year ago, Base had approximately 338,000 daily transactions, around 61,200 active addresses, and a TVL of about $830 million. These figures at that time corresponded to 1.48%, 11.29%, and 63.85% of Solana, respectively.
As of January 10, 2025, Base's data shows approximately 11.1 million daily transactions, about 810,000 active addresses, and a TVL of approximately $14.2 billion. Currently, the ratio of these three data points compared to Solana is: 17.59%, 12.88%, 167.06%.
Base's annual growth in these three indicators is 3184.02%, 1225.49%, and 1610.84%, respectively. In the same period, Solana's growth rates for these three indicators are 176.75%, 1062.36%, and 553.85%.
It can be seen that through a year of development, Base's transaction numbers and daily active data still have a significant gap compared to Solana. However, in terms of TVL, Base has completed the surpassing. Interestingly, Jesse and other key team members celebrated this data by live-streaming a head-shaving event on January 9.
In terms of the growth rates of other data, Base's growth momentum is also more aggressive than Solana's. If both sides maintain their current growth efficiency, Base may also exceed Solana in terms of transaction numbers in a year.
In addition to these data, another important indicator has also quietly changed. For most of the past year, Solana has been the network with the highest inflow of funds among public chains. However, recent data from the past three months shows that Base has become the public chain with the highest net inflow, with $2.5 billion in net inflow, while Solana ranks second with $900 million in net inflow.
The main change in this data may have occurred recently, with a total net inflow of about $3.8 billion over the past year, equivalent to nearly three months (2.5 billion) of net inflow accounting for 65% of the annual total.
From the election to Virtuals, Base is rapidly closing in with AI.
From the changes in details, 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 mainly come from the overall market growth brought by Trump's election after the U.S. elections. In the past month, the main reason for the attention on Base is that in the MEME track, which has been in long-term competition with Solana, a product that can compete with it, Virtuals Protocol, has finally emerged.
After various networks launched their own versions of Pump.fun, most remained silent. However, Virtuals Protocol has finally seized the opportunity of AI Agents, becoming the hottest one-click publishing platform for AI Agents currently. It has produced several AI Agent tokens with a market capitalization exceeding $100 million, such as aixbt and G.A.M.E.
According to Dexscreener's data, on January 11, the DEX trading volume on Solana was $6.88 billion, with 5,324 newly created trading pools in 24 hours, while Base's trading volume was $2.12 billion, with 2,673 newly launched trading pairs within 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 the MEME domain.
However, Sui also had a brief burst period earlier, but after the heat subsided, it inevitably fell silent again. Base's relative advantage lies in its much stronger capital retention effect than Sui, so as long as the TVL does not plummet, this popularity may still be maintained.
By comparing the data, it can be found that Base is becoming Solana's strongest competitor. However, the problem is that Base still lacks its governance token, making it difficult for the market to price it. The absence of a public chain token also allows 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, perhaps the greatest significance is not that the RWA field has gained another important asset, but that the value brought by the development of Base can finally be more directly reflected in Coinbase's stock price. For investors who can only participate in cryptocurrency trading, this can be seen as indirectly participating in the governance of Base and enjoying dividends. Based on Base's current data performance, the market capitalization converted to tokens should be over ten billion dollars. On January 11, Coinbase's market capitalization was about $64.7 billion, ranking after BNB and SOL in the cryptocurrency space. I wonder if, once the influx of on-chain funds to Base is enhanced, Coinbase's market capitalization can surpass BNB and SOL.
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