Coinbase has just made its Base platform publicly available, marking the launch mere hours ago. This L2 blockchain represents a pioneering move as it’s the first of its kind to be introduced by a publicly traded company. For Coinbase, this marks a novel avenue for generating revenue. The company will accrue user fees by overseeing its own blockchain operations. Concurrently, the applications developed atop the Base platform will generate an additional revenue stream for Coinbase. A recent analysis report from Nansen has shed light on the fact that a significant number of newly established whale wallets are deeply invested in meme coins across both Base and Ethereum. Regarding the count of these new wallets, the report has underscored:
“22 individuals categorized as ‘Early BASE Whales’ have been identified. Predominantly constituted of new and ‘fresh’ wallets originating in 2023, these investors have made substantial allocations to Ethereum and L2 networks.”
Coinbase’s base and Meme Coins
According to findings from Nansen, the majority of these wallets were primarily engaged with established decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and Layer 2 (L2) bridges. Notable platforms included 1inch, Uniswap, Base, 0x, USDC, and Unibot. Nansen’s research analyst, Jake Kennis, underscored that the substantial engagement with established DEXs, L2 bridges, and the notable presence of Unibot indicated the adoption of Telegram bots and emerging applications.
The analysis highlighted that the on-chain behavior exhibited by these wallets has remained relatively consistent over the preceding 1 to 3 months. Notably, even before the public launch of the coinbase’s Base mainnet, considerable activity related to meme coins had been unfolding. A recent article’s examination revealed that traders had been acquiring tokens such as BALD, COIN, and BASED through DEXes on the network.
Presently, the Base Whales hold Ethereum, while also diversifying their assets into Arbitrum’s native ARB token and the casino token, RLB. Transactions involving meme coins like BALD, TOSHI, and PEPE continue to occur. Intriguingly, another meme coin, named HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu and denoted by the ticker BITCOIN (distinct from the original BTC), has also managed to capture the interest of these high-volume investors.
Nansen observed that these 22 whales exhibit behaviors intrinsic to the crypto world. All of them have transferred over 100 ETH (equivalent to $185,100) since July 31, which marks the date when Base was accessible to users for direct interaction via a one-way bridge to its smart contract. However, an additional group of users opted to engage with Base upon its official launch day.