Trillion-dollar asset manager Franklin Templeton has recently suggested that the rise of Social Finance (SocialFi) apps indicates the arrival of what they call the “Base Season.” According to Franklin Templeton, Base, a popular Ethereum layer 2 platform, is well-positioned to capture a significant portion of the SocialFi market and maintain its leadership in the sector.
Franklin Templeton’s May report reveals that about 46% of SocialFi transactions are conducted on Base, which has been steadily gaining market share at the expense of BNB Chain and Polygon in recent months. The report also credits Coinbase’s support as a key factor in Base’s success in capturing almost half of the SocialFi market.
One notable SocialFi application built on Base is Friend.tech, which enables content creators to connect and monetize their content through “key” shares or “tokenized attention.” Franklin Templeton describes Base’s performance in the world of SocialFi as a “homerun” and emphasizes that it will continue to be a crucial vertical to monitor for Base’s growth and adoption in the long run.
In addition to Base, other popular SocialFi blockchains and protocols highlighted by Franklin Templeton include Theta Network, Decentralized Social, Fantasy.top, and Steem.
Franklin Templeton also attributes Base’s increased network activity to the recent memecoin mania. The report suggests that this trend has further contributed to the platform’s rise in popularity.
According to L2BEAT, Base is currently the third largest Ethereum layer 2 network in terms of total value locked (TVL), with $5.4 billion. It trails behind Arbitrum One and OP Mainnet, which have TVLs of $15.9 billion and $6.90 billion, respectively. Notably, Base’s TVL has grown from $1 billion to $5.4 billion in less than three months, a significant achievement compared to the six months it took to reach the $1 billion milestone. Meanwhile, both Arbitrum One and OP Mainnet have experienced a decline in their TVLs over the past two months.
Coinbase officially launched Base in August of last year and currently holds full control over the platform as its sole sequencer. However, Coinbase plans to gradually decentralize Base in the future. Base was built using Optimism’s OP stack and aims to provide a secure, cost-efficient, and developer-friendly environment for Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible applications.
In related news, a recent magazine article highlights that 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, and 91% of them have vulnerabilities. This serves as a reminder of the risks associated with investing in meme coins on the Base platform.