Just one month after launching, Robinhood Chain has leapfrogged Base in daily active users, shaking up the Ethereum Layer 2 landscape. Robinhood Chain reported about 230,000 daily active users and crossed 9 billion dollars in decentralized exchange volumes, dwarfing Base’s recent activity.
Numbers Behind Robinhood Chain’s Surge
Robinhood Chain's rapid ascent is impressive. It peaked with a 24-hour trading volume of 877.6 million dollars on July 12, temporarily ranking as the second-largest network globally behind Solana. However, more than 80% of this activity comes from memecoin trading rather than its promoted tokenized stocks, which only make up about 4% of total volume. Despite a fivefold increase in tokenized stock trading by the end of July, stablecoins remain the dominant asset class.
Base’s Response and Strategic Shift
Base co-founder Jesse Pollak openly admitted the network’s social onchain product strategy had failed, pointing out the collapse of initiatives like Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and creator coins. This retreat leaves Base lagging in key emerging areas such as perpetual contracts and prediction markets. To counterbalance, Base highlights its solid distribution network featuring 187.8 million agentic payments and strong partnerships with Visa, Shopify, and JPMorgan. The network also plans to launch tokenized stocks soon, aiming to reclaim market share.
Base’s experience illustrates that initial dominance in decentralized finance can be quickly challenged without continuous innovation and user adoption. The market’s preference for memecoins over tokenized securities shows shifting trader behavior and platform priorities.
This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
