Crypto exchange Coinbase launched its Layer 2 network Base to the public on Wednesday, marking the first time a publicly traded U.S. company has started its own blockchain.
While the network went live at 12 pm ET on Aug. 9, several users had already bridged over $160 million worth of tokens before a User Interface (UI) to withdraw funds was made available to the public. This might have explained the apparent lack of enthusiasm from new users, with Base seeing just $10 million worth of inflows on day one.
The second day, however, was a different story, as network activity and user count rapidly picked up. Data from Dune shows that the network had over 136,000 daily active users on Thursday – 30% of which were new Base users.
The blockchain also saw a 46% increase in transactions per second with an average of 8.76 TPS per day, putting it third behind Ethereum and zkSync Era, according to data from L2Beat.
Total Value Locked (TVL) on Base also soared 80% to $168 million on Thursday , making it the fifth largest Layer 2 blockchain today.
While the market for Layer 2 scaling solutions has been heating up with the launch of several new protocols like Polygon’s zkEVM and ConsenSys’ Linea, Coinbase stands to be a contender for a significant amount of market share given its existing user base of 80 million on its trading platform.
“Base will be prioritized when it comes to off-ramping (through lower fees/access), and feature DeFi integrations directly from the Coinbase exchange product,” wrote DeFi analyst Miles Deutscher on Twitter.
