The Binance Playbook
Binance did this years ago. They launched BNB Chain—an integrated exchange, centralized sequencer, native stablecoin, massive user base. The exchange captured the onramp, the trading, the chain economics. It worked. BNB Chain still processes significant volume today.
Coinbase is running the same playbook for the US and Western markets.
The difference: Coinbase is doing it on Ethereum infrastructure, with regulatory clarity, and institutional partnerships already signed. Base is an optimistic rollup on Ethereum's OP Stack. Transactions settle to Ethereum for security. But Coinbase runs the sequencer—and collects the fees.
L2 Fee Revenue
Total Value Locked:
Base leads L2s in TVL—capital sitting on the chain, deployed in DeFi protocols, held in wallets. But TVL alone doesn't tell the full story. What matters for Coinbase is transaction activity.
Fee Revenue (30-day):
Base generates roughly 3x the fee revenue of Arbitrum. This isn't TVL or token speculation—it's transaction fees. Users paying to use the network. Every transaction on Base pays a fee to Coinbase's sequencer.
What Is Base
Base is an optimistic rollup built on the OP Stack, which Optimism open-sourced. The OP Stack now powers ... of Ethereum L2 fee revenue—Base, Optimism, Blast, and Zora combined dominate the market. The rest is split between Arbitrum (its own Nitro stack) and ZK rollups like zkSync, Scroll, and Linea.
The Base ecosystem has three parts:
Base Chain — the L2 network itself. Transactions are batched and posted back to Ethereum for security. Coinbase runs the sequencer. Every transaction on Base pays a fee—that fee goes to Coinbase. The business model works without a token. The sequencer is the revenue engine.
Base Build — the developer platform. Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) provides wallets, payments, and APIs. OnchainKit, MiniKit, and AgentKit are the SDKs to ship onchain apps quickly.
Base Apps (formerly Coinbase Wallet) — the consumer layer. A super app for trading, payments, messaging, and mini apps.
The Ecosystem
The strategy is vertical integration. Coinbase controls:
- The onramp (fiat to crypto)
- The wallet (Base Apps)
- The network (Base)
- The payments rail (USDC)
- The social layer (Farcaster integration)
Users can enter through Coinbase, use Base Apps, transact on Base, and never leave the ecosystem. Coinbase captures value at every layer.
Telegram has a wallet feature now. More consumer apps will integrate crypto rails. The super app model is coming to the West—and Coinbase is positioning Base as the infrastructure layer.
Institutional Capital
JPMorgan partnered with Coinbase. They launched JPMD—a USD-denominated token—on Base mainnet in November 2025. First major bank to issue a dollar token on a public blockchain. Kinexys, JPMorgan's blockchain division, has processed $1.5 trillion in blockchain transactions since inception.
BlackRock's BUIDL fund ($1.74B in tokenized Treasuries) is live across multiple chains including Ethereum. Circle provides instant USDC redemption. Binance and Deribit accept BUIDL as derivatives collateral.
Coinbase is building the infrastructure layer between TradFi and crypto. Base is how they're capturing transaction revenue while institutions adopt blockchain rails.
The Token Question
Base has no token. The economics work through sequencer fees. Whether Coinbase launches a token later is speculation—but the current model generates real revenue without one.
What I'm Building
I'm building on Base.
Appendix
L1 Fee Revenue (for reference):
Bridge Flows (7-day):
Net capital movement between Ethereum and each L2. Green = inflow, red = outflow.
