Base briefly nears 1,000 TPS, making it speed competitive with Solana

Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base briefly saw the number of transactions it processed per second near 1,000, bringing it closer to the performance of layer-1 blockchain Solana.

On May 29, Base creator Jesse Pollak said on X that Base had sustained near 1,000 transactions per second (TPS) during a launch on the agentic artificial intelligence platform Virtuals. 

The Ethereum scaling blockchain hit a maximum of 959 transactions a second and has a theoretical maximum of 1,429 TPS, according to Chainspect. 

However, its real-time TPS is around 156, and these spikes are driven by other platforms launching tokens on Base or memecoin trading frenzies. Basescan reports a current TPS of 137 for the network. 

Comparatively, Solana’s throughput is currently 1,039 transactions per second, according to Chainspect, which strips out data such as vote transactions. Solscan reports a similar figure of “true TPS” at 1,029. 

Base’s brief transaction throughput put it much closer to Solana for a time, but the latter has remained more consistent with its TPS.

The Virtuals AI agent platform had a token launch event this week for what it called an “emotionally intelligent, voice-native AI companion” named Solace. According to DeFillama, the Virtuals Protocol generated more than $60,000 in fees on Base on May 28, compared to just $4,000 on Solana. 

There was a spike in Base fees on May 29, but the average was still around 4 cents, according to Dune Analytics. 

Related: Base creator Jesse Pollak admits ‘Base is for pimping’ art was a mistake

Base is the largest rollup-based layer-2 network in terms of value locked onchain, with $15.3 billion, according to L2beat. It has now surpassed both Arbitrum One and the OP mainnet and has a market share of almost 34%.

Solana leads on DeFi TVL

Both Base and Solana have positioned themselves as platforms primarily used to mint and trade memecoins, and both derive most of their network revenue from those sources. 

However, Base’s decentralized finance-derived total value locked is $3.75 billion, which is close to its all-time high, according to DefiLlama.

Comparatively, Solana has $9 billion in value locked on DeFi protocols and is down 18% from its January all-time high of $11 billion, which was driven by memecoin trading. 

Ethereum remains the king of DeFi, with almost $63 billion in TVL, but its transaction throughput is far lower, and its fees are higher compared with Base and Solana.

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