DEGEN Rallies On Increasing Adoption By Base Ecosystem Projects

Activity on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network developed by Coinbase, shows no signs of slowing down, with weekly transactions hitting an all-time high of nearly 10 million.

As investors look to position themselves for ‘Base season,’ DEGEN, a token that was initially airdropped to active users of the web3 social network Farcaster, is leading the charge with an astonishing 1,500% rally in the past 30 days to a market capitalization of $212 million.

The token now commands a fully diluted valuation north of $600 million and is increasingly being seen as a proxy bet on the Base ecosystem since the network doesn’t have a native token like most competing Layer 2s. While airdrop farmers are speculating that this may change in the future, Coinbase has been tight-lipped about any potential token plans.

While it started out as a way to incentivize engagement on Farcaster, the project has since evolved, raising $1.5 million in funding last month and disbursing grants to incubate new projects.

Drakula, a video-sharing app likened to a ‘web3 TikTok,’ received a grant of 20 million DEGEN tokens, currently worth over $300,000. In-app transactions are denominated in the token and the platform recently crossed $10 million in trading volume.

Other projects that received grants include the prediction game Perl, which lets users bet using DEGEN, and the asset streaming protocol Superfluid, which developed a feature called ‘StreamYoink’ that lets users earn a steady stream of DEGEN until someone else takes it over.