Stablecoin activity has shifted over the past year, with Base emerging as the busiest L2 chain. Driven by trading and DeFi, Base has left other L2s behind.
Base is another fast-growing hub for stablecoin transfers. The chain is carrying $USDC, one of the most active stablecoins in the past year.
As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, Solana also saw a breakout of stablecoin activity, signaling users appreciated fast networks with low fees, as well as user-oriented apps. The shift to stablecoin usage indicates chains are returning to financial infrastructure, after abandoning previous narratives.
The supply of $USDC and other stablecoins reached a record on Base this January.
Stablecoins on Base spiked to a new record in January, mainly driven by new $USDC inflows. | Source: Dune Analytics
Circle also became a top 3 app on the chain. Base remains tokenless, so stablecoins are key to building liquidity pairs. The chain also saw Uniswap rise as the most widely used feature, further boosting demand for stablecoins.
The chain reacted to expectations that stablecoins would become the main use case for crypto. While yield is still not officially allowed, Base hosts multiple yield-bearing opportunities.
Base carries $USDC primarily
Over 90% of the stablecoin supply on Base is in the form of $USDC. Base carries a total of $4.81B in stablecoins, getting ahead of Arbitrum with $3.75B and Hyperliquid with $4.6B. Polygon still lags with $3.4B in stablecoin supply, despite its bid to become a payment network.
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The recent concentration of stablecoins shows L2 has lost its appeal due to liquidity fragmentation. Additionally, bridging is usually seen as cumbersome due to fees or risk of losses. Bridging and using stablecoins on other L2 chains has mostly coincided with periods of airdrop farming and has slowed down in the past year.
Base is positioning the network as a platform for payment apps, similar to Solana, Polygon, and others. With the rise of stablecoin payments worldwide, older chains abandoned other less active use cases like $NFT or gaming.
Base takes up finance as its main use case
While Base was created as a cheap chain for fun on-chain activity, including NFTs, memes, and DEX trading, in 2026, the chain switched toward decentralized finance.
A little over 30% of Base activity is dedicated to financial operations, based on L2 data.
Over 30% of Base activity is dedicated to financial operations. | Source: GrowThePie
Base also got a boost from expanded lending, mostly through the Morpho and Aave protocols. The wave of decentralized lending followed the previous period, where Base was mainly used for perpetual futures trading through Aerodrome.
Base is the main hub for curated lending vaults, with Gauntlet and Steakhouse also among the most active apps. Demand for vaults and transactions also boosted $USDC as the main source of liquidity.
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