Daily trading volume on Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase, has experienced significant growth over the past week. This is probably due to the lower transaction fees resulting from the Dencun upgrade.
This layer 2 network experienced a sudden surge in daily users and transactions, reaching record highs immediately after the Dencun upgrade. This has resulted in a significant reduction in transaction fees across most Layer 2s, including Base.
The number of daily transactions on the Base network was around 440,000 just before Dencun. According to The Block’s data dashboard, the number of transactions based on a 7-day moving average hit a new high of over 1.05 million transactions on March 17, just days after the Dencun upgrade.
This surpassed the volume of other major bullish rollups. On March 17, Arbitrum recorded 960,000 transactions and Optimism recorded 519,000 transactions.
A similar trend was observed in Base’s new user influx. Base’s weekly number of new users surged to 800,000 last week, a 600% increase over the previous week before the Dencun upgrade was implemented and a record high for the network.
The upgrade introduces a new transaction type for Layer 2 called Blob. These blobs provide a new location point on the chain when posting information to Ethereum, providing a direct path to reducing fees by breaking away from traditional “call data” methods.
Base’s median gas rate has fallen from about $0.50 on March 13, just before Dencun went live, to about $0.003 today. This is one of the lowest among various layer 2 networks. Meanwhile, Base’s average fee is currently $0.09.
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