Base Ecosystem: When Hype Gradually Cools Down

Since the Mainnet on September 5, 2023, Base has received great interest and attention from the Crypto community with the leadership of Friend.tech. However, in recent times, with the decline of Friend.tech, Base has also lost its appeal to users. Let’s update Base’s operations with Weakhand in this article.

Before jumping into the article, everyone can refer to some of the following articles to understand better.

• What is base? Base cryptocurrency overview
• Base ecosystem and growth drivers from Friend.tech or Aerodrome
• What is Friend.tech? Friend.tech cryptocurrency overview

Overview of On-chain Indicators on Base

The number of daily Transactions on Base is witnessing a sharp decline since reaching ATH on September 15, 2023 with nearly 1.9M Transactions. Up to now, the number of daily transactions fluctuates around just over 300,000 transactions.

This may come from the two main platforms being:

• Friend.tech – the main platform that created Base’s hype, is gradually losing its appeal to users.
• Aerodrome – the Fork version of Velodrome on optimism, only gained traction during the initial release period and gradually fell short.

The fact that Base’s ecosystem has too few quality projects and only stands out in two key projects, Friend.tech and Aerodrome, when these two projects gradually lose their attraction, we see that the Base ecosystem has been damaged. The impact is severe and the clear evidence is that the number of Transactions has decreased sharply.

When considering the TVL index across the entire Base ecosystem, we also see a decline from 400M USD to currently only 293M USD. This still comes from the old cause, Aerodrome, when this AMM has witnessed a sharp decline in TVL from 200M USD to only 56M USD at the present time.

There is a positive point if we consider the number of daily active users on Base. At present, the number of daily users on Base reaches about 90,000 Users. Although the indicators of TVL or especially Transactions witnessed a sharp decrease, the number of daily users on Base did not decrease and even witnessed a slight increase in recent times.

A special point is that when compared to other Layer 2s, Base is the ecosystem that attracted the most new wallet addresses in October 2023. Base had 847K new wallet addresses while second and third competitors Arbitrum and StarkNet only reached 641k and 453k new wallet addresses, respectively.

Update Base’s Recent Outstanding Activities

Base has had many outstanding activities in October 2023, from implementing Base Grants or continuing with Base Onchain Daily to introduce projects in Base to the community. Let’s find out the details now.

Launch of Builder Grants

With an ecosystem that is still in its early stages like Base, attracting more Builders and new projects to its ecosystem is extremely important. So far Base is also doing quite well with this by deploying grants through Hackathons (like at ETH Denver and 100 Builders) or the Onchain Summer program launched at the same time as Base Mainnet.

Recently, Base continued to deploy Builder Grants with small grants to Builders with the most meaningful contributions to Base. Builder Grants will rely on the following criteria to evaluate and grant funding to Builders:

• Did Builder create something unique and interesting?
• Does Builder bring any value to users?
• Is the Builder’s contribution direct and impactful?

Continue with Base Onchain Daily

Onchain Summer ended successfully with many projects introduced to the community through this program. However, every day there are many new projects continuously deployed on Base in many different fields from art, music to games,… Therefore, Base has launched Onchain Daily – an introduction program. Introducing projects in the Base ecosystem to the community, in which every day Base will introduce a project, with interesting stories surrounding that project.

Base Ecosystem Fund announced its first investment in 6 projects on Base

Base Ecosystem Fund is a Coinbase Ventures-led fund launched earlier this year, aiming to invest in outstanding projects built on Base. With more than 800 applications submitted, Base Ecosystem Fund has filtered and selected the 6 most outstanding projects including:

• Avantis: Is an Oracle-based derivatives platform where users can trade cryptocurrencies and real-world assets with up to 100x leverage and earn profits as market makers by providing USDC liquidity.
• BSX: It is one of the Perp DEXs that is expected to be extremely prominent in the future on Base’s ecosystem. BSX aims for a high-performance Perp DEX model with Off-chain Orderbook along with On-chain Settlements. This model will give users a fast, smooth, simple experience similar to when they trade Perp on exchanges. CEX exchanges like Binance or Bybit.
• Onboard: Is a Selff-custody Wallet product for everyone. With Onboard, people can store and trade cryptocurrencies. Not only that, Onboard also supports Nigerian Naira money and two methods: bank transfer and mobile wallet. Onboard is built to bring Crypto towards Mass Adoption in the near future.
• OnpenCover: As an insurance platform, it helps protect users’ investment portfolios against possible risks such as smart contract hacks, Oracle errors, etc. at an affordable price.
• Paragraph: A social media platform that allows users to publish their content and monetize it, Paragraph was founded by Colin Armstrong in 2021. Paragraph successfully raised $17M with Investment from FTX Ventures, Binance Labs, GCR and Seed Club Ventures.
• Truflation: As an Onchain Financial Oracle platform, it provides an automatic CPI indicator by synthesizing from many different data sources in real time. This product helps users have close and accurate assessments of the inflation picture because they listen to the report once a month.

Launching Base Bootcamp

Base Bootcamp is an 8-week program for experienced software development students to learn how to build and develop Smart Contracts on Blockchain. The goal of this program is to help students interested in Blockchain have easier access to Smart Contract and the world of Blockchain.

Students selected for this program will have:

• Dedicated advisor: Students will be paired with a mentor who they will meet weekly
• Reach Base and Coinbase engineers: A select group of engineers will host regular, optional office hours throughout the program to help students overcome challenges
• Controlled Discord channel: Students can connect and collaborate with their team, Coinbase engineers, and program advisors in a controlled Discord channel
• Learning materials developed by Base engineers: Students will work through Base Camp’s comprehensive, publicly available curriculum, as well as receive additional resources and team-graded assignments.

During the final two weeks of the program, participants will work on their final project – a real-world dapp and pitch it to the judging panel.

Update the Base Ecosystem in October 2023

Dex on Base – Aerodrome has been left behind

Although the launch was very impressive with TVL reaching 200M USD in just 5 days and becoming the platform with the leading TVL on Base, after a while, Aedrome can no longer maintain its unique position and TVL is no longer able to maintain its unique position. has dropped very sharply to only 56M USD.

In the list of top 5 Dexes with top trading volume on Base, we see the rise of BaseSwap when in the past 24 hours it achieved a trading volume of up to 18M USD, far surpassing Aedrome with only 2.3M USD. However, the number of users on Aerodrome still remains at 2,300 people, much higher than BaseSwap with only 816 people.

In addition, on this list we also see the appearance of two notable names: Uniswap and PancakeSwap. With their established position, these two giants will definitely know how to attract users to their platform, which makes it even more difficult for Aerodrome to maintain its position on Base.

Friend.tech – The attraction is no longer the same as before

Friend.tech is seeing a significant decline in all metrics from Daily Transactions to the number of users participating on the platform. According to data from Dune, the number of Transactions has witnessed a sharp decline of more than 30 times compared to the peak set on September 13 – 14, 2023. Up to now, the number of daily Transactions is only about 20,000 Transactions.

Along with the decrease in Transactions, we also see a decrease in the number of users when currently the number of daily users on Friend.tech only reaches about 5,000 people.

Chainlink’s CCIP is now available on Base

Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) is an infrastructure for cross-chain message transmission or token transfer according to Mint – Burn mechanism and Lock – Unlock mechanism. Basically, CCIP has many similarities with Circle’s CCTP.

CCIP helps transfer assets or Tokens between chains quickly and according to the Mint – Burn mechanism, so there is no price slippage or high fees. Just pay the Gas fee of the original chain and the order will be completed. Based on data and information updated in real time and Chainlink’s own security, CCIP has a very high level of security. CCIP’s announcement of deployment on Base on September 27, 2023 will help attract a large number of Cross-chain protocols built on its Base ecosystem.

Some notable projects deployed on Base

In recent times, the Base ecosystem has seen a number of notable projects deployed on its Blockchain. We can mention:

• Dmail Network: An AI-powered decentralized infrastructure building platform that provides seamless, anonymous messaging and notification services across various chains and applications.
• Maple Finance: A Lending & Borrowing protocol targeting customers who are individuals and organizations outside of TradFi. Lenders will provide collateral which is real-world assets such as real estate, bonds, stocks,… to borrow loans in DeFi through Maple Finance.
• Blackbird: Is a platform that allows users to explore a curated list of restaurants, review them, make reservations through the app, and earn cashback rewards for their dining experience, which can be redeemed for future meals or other perks. Blackbird announced its successful call for 24M USD last October, bringing the total amount through 2 rounds of raising up to 35M USD.
• Moonwell: A Lending & Borrowing platform on Moonbeam announced expansion and deployment on Base. Besides Compound, the appearance of Moonwell has helped the Lending segment on Base become more attractive than ever.

summary

It seems that after the cooling of Friend.tech, Base is shifting to attracting large projects or projects that Coinbase Ventures has invested in its ecosystem. This has also brought efficiency as the number of users on Base has remained high and has not decreased in recent times. Above is all the information I want to update about the base in this article. I hope everyone has received useful knowledge.