Base is testing Solana’s dominance in token launches, with a recent burst of SocialFi activity pushing the Ethereum layer-2 network to the top of the industry’s leaderboard.

In recent years, Solana has been the go-to chain for new tokens. Its low fees and high throughput are drawing traders away from Ethereum. It’s become a hub for memecoins, with launchpads like Pump.fun spawning tens of thousands of tokens daily.

The surge on Coinbase’s Base is coming from a different kind of token economy, built on social media posts, viral moments and a new wave of creator tools. Coinbase recently introduced the Base App by rebranding its wallet, sparking a surge in SocialFi activity on applications like Zora.

Token launches have tilted to Base in recent weeks, but Solana still leads in key activity metrics, according to Nansen data. And even as Zora is onboarding crypto’s biggest names to Base, critics question whether the thousands of new tokens have monetary value or if they’ll fade away as just another blockchain fad.

Base App’s rebrand sparks new Ethereum L2 SocialFi wave

Coinbase’s July 16 rebrand to the Base App turned its wallet into a creators’ hub where users can post, mint and trade their posts through the integration of social tools like Zora and Farcaster.

The impact was immediate. On July 16, Base recorded 7,557 new token launches. The next day, that number roughly tripled to 22,098.

On July 17, Zora beat Pump.fun in token launches to place second in the industry, at a time when Solana launchpad LetsBonk was eating into Pump.fun’s market dominance. Zora then overtook LetsBonk to claim the top spot on July 23. The next day, Zora’s 38,254 token launches surpassed the combined total of Solana’s rival memecoin platforms, which recorded 29,012 tokens.

But not everyone is convinced that the thousands of new Zora tokens hold any value. “Most users have unknowingly entered into a market with an often overlooked flaw: There’s usually no liquidity to ever sell the token, trapping both creators and their fans in a worthless token,” Brian Huang, co-founder of Glider, told Cointelegraph.

Alexander Cutler, CEO of Aerodrome — a decentralized exchange on Base — publicly defended Zora. He argued that heavy Instagram users are drawn to Zora, as they get rewarded for their usual activities.

“I’ve onboarded more normies to it than anything in crypto and they’re enjoying it. The speculators are just making the markets,” Cutler said on X.

Solana still outpaces Base despite the Ethereum L2’s surge

Like other social media platforms, simply posting on Zora doesn’t guarantee an audience. It takes time, dedication and consistency to grow a following. Just because a user’s post is tokenized doesn’t mean it has liquidity or value.

“Counting the number of tokens created is a worthless metric. It’s the value of these tokens in aggregate that’s important,” Huang said.

“As you can imagine, in a world where social media is generally considered free, 99.99% of these content tokens will be similarly worthless.”

Zora tokens’ value has been a popular punching bag for critics, but Solana tokens have followed a similar path. As Cointelegraph previously reported, almost 99% of tokens launched on Pump.fun don’t gain enough attention and liquidity. They, too, are ultimately worthless.

On rare occasions, Solana memecoins become tradable and even surge to millions in market capitalization. Celebrity endorsements and backing by political leaders have also helped memecoins break out, though a lot of them have been plagued with scam allegations.

Solana remains ahead by almost every broader activity metric. Its ecosystem benefits from established liquidity pools, mature decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and a developer community accustomed to shipping at speed.

While Base’s throughput typically falls short of Solana’s, it did demonstrate its competitive potential by reaching a peak of 959 transactions per second (TPS) during a high-volume token launch. But Solana is in the process of adopting Firedancer — currently via the hybrid Frankendancer on about 10% of validators — to boost performance and throughput, with internal tests already demonstrating up to 1 million TPS.

Even the “Solana guy” is talking about Base’s Zora nowadays

Base’s SocialFi-fueled token launch surge shows how quickly onchain momentum can shift, especially when a platform finds a cultural hook. Zora has given Base a distinct niche rooted in content creation. For now, that novelty is driving user engagement.

But the underlying economics remain young and fragile. Most of the new tokens on Zora have little to no liquidity, echoing the same pattern that has defined Solana’s memecoin boom. 

“Why not just let fans tip creators directly? Seems like a much more straightforward and well-understood solution. Instead, we have this convoluted process, which seems like a way to boost vanity metrics on Base without creating long-term value,” said Huang. 

Despite the critics, Zora continues to pique the curiosity of crypto’s most well-known names. One of them is Zion Thomas (better known as Ansem), a key influencer and investor in the memecoin space, who was even given the nickname “Solana guy.”

Solana’s edge comes from more than speed and low costs. Years of ecosystem building have given it mature liquidity pools and developed DeFi protocols. That depth makes it harder for newcomers to displace, even when they post headline-grabbing spikes in activity.

Even if Base can replicate its current growth bursts, matching Solana’s depth of activity will require more than social-driven tokenization. The real test will be whether it can turn viral moments into sustained ecosystems with real liquidity, sticky users and applications that hold attention after the novelty fades. Without that, the current surge risks going down as another short-lived chapter in crypto’s constant churn of onchain fads.