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Coinbase-incubated Base has overtaken Solana to become the ninth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL).
According to DeFiLlama data, DeFi protocols on Base have amassed deposits totaling $370.50 million, in contrast to Solana's $310.25 million.
Among Ethereum layer-2 protocols, Base currently stands as the third-largest network in terms of the value bridged across its network, ranking behind only Arbitrum and Optimism, according to L2Beat.
Base is also the most active network compared to both Ethereum and rival layer-2 networks, with daily average transactions per second (TPS) of 15.15, while Ethereum and layer-2s lag behind at 11 TPS or lower, L2beat data shows.
Friend.tech leads activity on Base
Base’s recent growth can be attributed to heightened activity on Web3 social media platform Friend.tech, as well as the recent addition of reputable DeFi applications to the blockchain over the past few weeks.
Base’s DeFi deposits surpassed $300 million for the first time after the launch of Aerodrome DEX as users rushed to farm the early liquidity mining incentives.
Besides Aerodrome DEX, the expansion of popular Ethereum DeFi protocols to Base, including lending platform Compound Finance, decentralized exchange Uniswap, and cross-chain bridging protocol Stargate, also contributed to the spike in DeFi deposits.
Over the last two weeks, Friend.tech has led the surge in Base deposits and activity. It currently holds the number two spot in terms of DeFi deposits and number one spot concerning activity and revenues on Base, per DeFiLlama data.
Friend.tech is a social media platform with tokenized accounts. Only users who own the Keys of specific accounts get access to private chat groups on the platform.
The number of Friend.tech Keys purchased and sold has increased since September 9, reaching a new peak of 539,810 transactions on September 13, according to data from Dune dashboard analyst CryptoKoryo.
Additionally, over $130 million has been deposited into the application since September 9, as the number of deposits more than doubled from just over $100 million to $230 million presently.
The platform had a tremendous start in August. However, it gradually declined due to concerns about the application's privacy policies and the steep bonding curve, which resulted in significantly higher costs for account keys as their popularity increased.
Still, activity on the platform has surged due to airdrop speculation, as early users hope to receive governance tokens for the platform.
Friend.tech also enables sharing of trading fees as royalties for shareholders; the only way to earn from the platform is through royalty fees. Users who own Keys of accounts receive royalty fees everytime a key is traded, which is likely fueling the purchases of Twitter accounts by the account holders themselves and other speculators.