Base sequencer revenue surpasses Arbitrum and Optimism combined

Dominant transaction volumes

Base commands the L2 market. Base alone captures over 60% of all L2 transactions. While Arbitrum and Optimism collected $5.5 million in combined revenue in July, Base’s profit of $55 million in 2025 dwarfs that total. Base’s sequencer fees fuel Coinbase’s technology-segment revenue. Base users enjoy low costs. In late 2024, Base transaction fees reached millions of dollars for a few days in March and April. Base’s economic model focuses on capturing fees through activity-based streams like DEX trading and agentic payments. Base reported 11.57 million daily transactions in early 2026. This sequencer revenue contributes to Coinbase’s net revenue via its technology segment. Over 90% of on-chain agentic stablecoin transactions occurred in USDC on Base in Q1, and Coinbase processed 100 million payments via its x402 protocol. Base maintained 99.5% mainnet uptime over the 90 days ending July 28, 2026. Base experienced a sequencer downtime event in February 2025. Base’s sequencer revenue also includes payments for transaction execution on its own layer, though the network maintains a Stage 1 optimistic rollup classification.

Base’s growth remains rapid.

User adoption trends

I find the data telling.

Base maintains 1.2 million daily active addresses. This figure exceeds Arbitrum’s count by a factor of three. In early 2026, Base reached 663,000 daily active addresses and 11.57 million daily transactions. You already know that distribution beats technology. Base’s $3 billion TVL and $14 billion bridged TVL surpass Arbitrum’s $2.8 billion TVL. Arbitrum users favor the network for its deep DeFi liquidity in protocols like GMX and Uniswap. Arbitrum maintains $11.66 billion in TVL according to a snapshot from August 29, 2026. Arbitrum also has over 1,000 ecosystem projects and 100 chains in development. Arbitrum generates revenue from sequencer margin and Orbit chain fees. Arbitrum brought in $4.5 million in revenue from excess fees in July, while Optimism made $950,000. Arbitrum holds $1.9 billion in DeFi TVL and $4 billion in stablecoins, according to data from FalconX. Arbitrum holds $806 million in real-world assets. Base transaction fees remain below one cent per transaction for most users.

Governance and competition

Arbitrum and Optimism face structural hurdles. Arbitrum generates the largest absolute revenue of any Ethereum L2, yet the ARB token trades at a discount to its implied value. The Arbitrum DAO faces difficult decisions because members remain deadlocked over whether to distribute revenue to token holders as dividends or use the funds for a grants program to attract talented developers to the ecosystem. Optimism relies on the Superchain strategy and the OP Stack to grow its ecosystem. Base uses the OP Stack as well, but it acts as a direct competitor to Optimism. Base ended its revenue-sharing agreement with the Optimism Collective in February 2026, which caused the OP token to drop approximately 25%. This exit left a hole in the Optimism financial model, as Base once contributed 90% to 97% of the collective’s total revenue at certain points. Optimism has committed to earmarking revenue for "retroactive public goods funding," yet the collective has not distributed any revenue via this method. Optimism has brought in 7,281 Ether since it started operating in June 2021. Optimism plans to allocate 30 million OP in its next funding round this fall instead of using transaction revenue to reward users. Arbitrum experienced a five-and-a-half-hour sequencer outage in 2022 during the Nitro upgrade, which demonstrated its dependence on a single operator. Arbitrum’s revenue remains tied to the activity of its established DeFi protocols like GMX and Uniswap. Does the Superchain model survive without Base?