According to L2 analytics platform GrowThePie, Base is projected to see its monthly active addresses increase nearly 56% from 3.96 million in May to roughly 6.18 million active addresses at the end of June, about three-quarters the number of Coinbase’s monthly transacting users (MTU).
In the first three months of 2024, Coinbase averaged eight million MTUs, defined as “a consumer who actively or passively transacts in one or more products,” states Coinbase’s quarterly report published on May 2.
The increase in Base’s monthly active addresses between April and May was less than 18,000, a blip compared to the more than 2.2 million address jump from May to June.
The Onchain Summer Impact
The record high in Base’s monthly active addresses coincides with Onchain Summer, an annual campaign that started in June and acts as “a decentralized movement for the entire ecosystem to usher in the next wave of onchain users,” a Coinbase blog post states.
Onchain Summer has contributed to the growth in Base’s active addresses, in part because it acts as an incentive program for those building on the network. Base and partners of Coinbase are “offering over 600 ETH ($2 million) in prizes, grants, and gas credits to eligible participants,” according to the blog post. “Optimism is also committing 600K OP for builders and creators working on impact projects across the Superchain,” a unified network of L2s built using OP Stack.
Read More: What Is Optimism Superchain And Why Is It Popular for Projects?
Base’s all-time high in monthly addresses comes in the same month Coinbase rolled out its smart wallets, which enable users to create a wallet address in a few seconds without the need to download additional applications or browser extensions.
Onchain Summer ends on Aug. 30 and it remains to be seen whether Base can sustain its current level of network activity once the campaign is over. When Onchain Summer 2023 was complete, monthly addresses declined slightly from about 955,000 in August to roughly 847,000 by December.
What Users Are Doing on Base
In the past 24 hours, wallet transfers and DeFi protocols, two of the top three categories in terms of gas consumption, had the highest number of active addresses on Base, per blockchain analytics firm Artemis. Additionally, the most popular applications by address count were Uniswap, Aerodrome, and USDbC, which is the bridged version of Circle’s stablecoin USDC on Base.
Coinbase’s share has remained relatively stable since the end of May when it was trading at $225.92, not far from where the share is currently at $224, data from Yahoo Finance shows.
Read More: US Government Sends $241 Million in Bitcoin to Coinbase, Per Arkham
Base is one of the leading L2 networks aiming to solve Ethereum’s scalability troubles that make gas fees expensive for users. Users have committed $7.38 billion in cryptoassets to the Coinbase-incubated network ahead of competing layer 2s, OP Mainnet and Blast, but trailing Arbiturm, per L2Beat.
