Base Overtakes Arbitrum By DeFi TVL

Base, the booming Layer 2 network from Coinbase, continues to expand its dominance over Ethereum's L2 ecosystem.

Base now boasts the largest DeFi ecosystem by total value locked (TVL) among L2s with an all-time high of $2.57 billion, according to DeFi Llama. Base overtook Arbitrum on Oct. 11, with Arbitrum hosting a TVL of $2.38 billion — down 27.3% since tagging a record high of $3.28 billion on July 29.

Base now ranks as the fifth-largest smart contract network by DeFi TVL behind Ethereum, Solana, Tron, and BNB Chain.

The milestone comes amid sustained growth from decentralized exchanges (DEXes) and lending protocols on Base.

Aerodrome and Uniswap, the two largest protocols on Base and the fifth and second largest DEXes by weekly volume, posted TVL growth of 100% and 40% over the past 30 days. Aerodrome accounts for more than half of Base’s TVL with $1.35 billion.

The Base deployments of lending protocols Aave, Morpho, and Moonwell also grew 30%, 24%, and 72% over the past month, with the protocols contributing $113.4 million, $107.6 million, and 96% million to Base’s TVL, respectively.

For comparison, 15 of Arbitrum’s 20 largest DeFi protocols posted TVL drawdowns for the past 30 days.

However, Arbitrum continues to lead by total network TVL with $13.7B compared to $7.8 billion on Arbitrum, according to L2beat.

Base throughput tags new highs

Base’s growing DeFi ecosystem continues to drive throughput to new highs, with the network hosting a record 71.6 transactions per second (TPS) on Oct. 13. Base accounted for 42.4% of combined Layer 2 throughput over the past 24 hours with 68.1 TPS, followed by Taiko with 33.4 TPS and Arbitrum with 24.5 TPS.

Base also hosted 1.41 million active addresses on Oct. 15 based on a seven-day rolling average, according to GrowThePie. Arbitrum ranked second with 480,400, followed by Taiko with 145,300.