Coinbase Says Revenue From Its Base Layer 2 Fell Despite Record Volume
Coinbase says Base is processing extra stablecoin quantity than some other blockchain — and the corporate is incomes much less from the community every quarter.
In its second-quarter earnings presentation filed Thursday, the change mentioned “different” transaction income fell 11% quarter-over-quarter to $47.4 million, “largely pushed by decrease Base income,” at the same time as stablecoin transaction quantity on Base grew seven instances year-over-year.
The disclosure lands in the course of the query hanging over each Ethereum L2: whether or not networks that compete on sub-cent charges can flip scale into income. Coinbase is engineering the trade-off intentionally, touting sub-cent, sub-one-second settlement as a product aim in the identical deck.
Scale With out Charges
The bucket that accommodates Base sequencer charges has shrunk from $68 million in Q3 2025 to $47.4 million final quarter. Over the identical stretch, CEO Brian Armstrong mentioned on Thursday’s earnings name, Base processed “about … 32 trillion within the final 12 months of stablecoin switch quantity,” making it “#1 now by way of stablecoin quantity” amongst all chains.
Coinbase additionally mentioned greater than 90% of agentic stablecoin transactions — funds initiated by AI brokers, largely through its x402 protocol — choose Base.
For Coinbase, the trade-off is deliberate: Base drives customers towards $USDC, the place the economics are far bigger. The corporate mentioned it has captured roughly 50% of all $USDC economics over the previous yr, and stablecoin income of $292.1 million was practically half the scale of its complete transaction income line in Q2.
However even stablecoin income couldn’t raise outcomes above analyst expectations. Income of $1.22 billion missed estimates, the corporate posted a $359.5 million internet loss — its third straight — and COIN fell about 5% in after-hours buying and selling. Coinbase additionally stopped disclosing buying and selling quantity as a key metric this quarter, pointing as an alternative to a report 10.3% share of world crypto buying and selling quantity.
No Base Token
The outcomes gave no consolation to anybody ready on a Base token: the phrase seems nowhere within the earnings deck, the 10-Q, or the decision. Armstrong as an alternative repeated that there’s “a path to decentralize it over time … by way of the completely different levels of decentralization,” and claimed a “2-year head begin” over newer entrants equivalent to Robinhood’s and Stripe’s L2s.
He additionally floated a novel concept about the place the L2 race ends: consolidation. “The query is, how and when will that consolidation part occur? And the way may there be kind of an M&A-type course of on the earth of blockchains?” Armstrong mentioned. “We would need to turn out to be a little bit of a specialist in that space.”
Armstrong confirmed that Jordan Fish, the crypto-native investor and podcaster often known as Cobie, has joined to run the Base app — “he comes from that neighborhood, which is basically good.”
DeFi-Powered Borrow/Lend
The quarter’s different under-the-radar DeFi quantity: common borrow and lend balances within the Coinbase app hit a report $1.49 billion, up from $199 million a yr in the past. These balances, the corporate notes, are “powered by onchain DeFi protocols” accessible within the app, mainly Morpho on Base.
Coinbase additionally reported greater than $5 billion in cb-wrapped belongings, together with cbBTC and cbETH, and its product roadmap lists a retail DEX, expanded DeFi borrowing and lending, and crypto-backed mortgages.
Coinbase’s personal $ETH place was flat at 150,279 $ETH held for funding, per the 10-Q, carried at $235.7 million in opposition to a $340.6 million price foundation. In the meantime, it added roughly 1,900 BTC within the f
Staking income fell 42% year-over-year to $83.3 million, the bottom quarterly determine within the greater than three years of knowledge Coinbase disclosed, on decrease Solana and Ethereum costs and reward charges.
