The Base network is a blockchain network that is on the rise. Powered by Ethereum and built by the Coinbase exchange, this network is expected to onboard a new wave of regular people into the crypto space. As such, the tokens on base, often called Base tokens or Base chain coins, are uniquely positioned to benefit from the coming growth.
However, the question remains: which tokens will benefit the most? Which have the best long-term investment prospects?
This guide dives into the best Base coins for investment. It explores the projects, why they deserve investments, and the risks associated with investing in them.
Aerodrome is a decentralised exchange on the Base network and the largest application with $730 million in total value locked. The exchange provides swap services, liquidity pools, voting incentives, and a comprehensive list of services for efficient swaps.
Aerodrom isn’t just a Dex on the Base network; it is ‘the’ Dex. Every ecosystem has a major Dex where most financial swaps and transactions flow. Aerodrome is primed as the major Dex for the Base network, and Its liquidity pools will end up powering other Dexes on the network.
As such, its token, which carries voting power and can be used to incentivise liquidity pools, will become more valuable as the ecosystem grows and generates more financial transactions.
Aerodrome has an infinite maximum supply. This means that more tokens can be minted at any time. While decisions like this will be left to the public via governance voting, this makes Aerodrome inflationary.
If activities on the Base network do not continue growing, or another Dex knocks Aerodrome as the major Dex, then AERO tokens could quickly lose value.
As of writing, there are 1 billion AERO tokens, 424 million of which are circulating. At a price of $1.42, AERO has a market capitalisation of $602 million. These numbers mean that Aerodrome has grown quite a bit but still has room to grow, especially in the long term.
To buy AERO, sign up on a crypto exchange like Coinbase. Alternatively, you can start by reading our Coinbase review to learn more.
Propy is a blockchain-powered real estate platform that allows you to buy real estate anywhere in the world from your home without having to liaise with agents, fill out unnecessary paperwork, or go through long processes. The platform combines AI and blockchain tech to disrupt the property market.
The best blockchain use case is to enhance existing processes and markets. Propy provides a platform that allows buyers and sellers to manage their documents, execute deals, and store the data for these deals on an immutable ledger.
The platform has already processed over $4 billion in property sales and transactions since inception.
While Propy provides an innovative service, it has not yet captured a significant portion of the market, and the open-source nature of blockchain technology creates a low barrier to entry where anyone can build their version of Propy.
The Propy token (PRO) has a limited supply of 100 million tokens, 57 million of which are already in circulation. It has logged some growth at a market capitalisation of $175 million. The platform has also been live since 2017 and recently moved to Base, which means that it has survived two bear markets and still maintained growth.
You can buy Propy on exchanges like Coinbase or decentralised exchanges like Uniswap.
Degen is a Layer 3 network built on Base that rewards content creators for posting high-quality content that fosters genuine interactions. The project allows users to reward one another for posting content, bridging the gap between online contributions and real-world value.
Degen is one of the pioneer projects that takes memecoin culture a step forward. It integrates with Farcaster, a popular decentralised social network, and effectively monitises content, a process that has been proven profitable by legacy social networks like Twitter and Instagram.
However, it doesn’t stop at monetising content; it also builds a community around monetisation to ensure sustainability.
Like the frontier of any field, the road ahead is untested and fraught with obstacles. The success of this platform is also tied to the success of Farcaster, and history has shown that decentralised social networks can fall in and out of fashion quite easily (an example is Lens).
Nonetheless, Degen has a bright future, provided the network can adapt to the changing decentralised social network scene.
The Degen network is powered by the DEGEN token, which has a total supply of 36.9 million tokens, 12.4 million of which are in circulation. It currently stands at a market cap of $369 million.
You can buy Degen on exchanges like Kucoin.
Brett is a memecoin on the Base network. Touted as Pepe’s best friend, the coin quickly rose in popularity from zero in February to a market capitalisation of over $300 million.
Every blockchain network has a major memecoin that serves as the mascot for all memecoins on the network. It is usually the first memecoin people consider on the network and, as such, enjoy positive price action. Brett is that memecoin for the Base network.
Because of its status as a major memecoin, Brett does not suffer price declines as steep as many of its memecoin peers on the network (this does not mean that Brett does not suffer price declines entirely).
While memecoins like Brett can grow exponentially within a short period, they often reach a market cap beyond which growth slows as investors may sell to buy newer memecoins. This makes memecoins unsuitable for bear markets or long-term holds.
BRETT has a total supply of 10 billion tokens, 8.4 billion of which are already in circulation. 85% of its supply has been locked in a liquidity pool for 365 days (starting Feb 26th), and the contracts have been renounced, which means that the developers cannot mint more tokens.
You can buy Brett on exchanges like ByBit.
Normie is a memecoin on a mission to onboard the next 1 million normies onto the Base ecosystem. The project taps into a key narrative around the Base chain, i.e., the Base chain being a chain for people without crypto knowledge, often referred to as “normies”.
Hype, narratives, and communities move memecoins. The stronger the narrative and the community around it, the better its chances of growing. Normie has keyed into a key narrative that envelopes the entire Base chain, i.e., the narrative that Base will be the chain that onboards millions of regular users into Web3.
With its market capitalisation being small compared to other memecoins on the network, Normie has a lot of room to grow.
Without any real utility, Normie is wholly dependent on hype and narrative. Should this narrative seize to hold sway, Normie could suffer steep price declines.
The Normie token (NORMIE) has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, 975 million currently in circulation. It trades at a market capitalisation of $60 million, leaving much room to grow.
You can buy NORMIE on some of the best decentralised exchanges, like Uniswap.
Higher is a token that powers a memecoin community built around decentralised social media. It is one of the new tokens pioneering a new era of memecoin culture that moves beyond hypes and narratives.
Higher is a memecoin community built around a product. Its position at the forefront of its niche and its $36 million market capitalisation provides unprecedented growth opportunities.
Higher is at the forefront of a new niche, meaning that a good chunk of its operations are untested. While this provides growth opportunities, it also allows for mistakes that could, in extreme cases, lead to failure.
The Higher platform is powered by the HIGHER token, which has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, all in circulation.
Seamless Protocol is Base’s first native DeFi lending market that allows users to supply capital and borrow funds on-chain. The application has a total value locked of roughly $23 million. You can deposit assets like ETH, USDC, DAI, wstETH, DEGEN, and cbETH, and borrow funds against them.
Seamless is in a similar position to Aerodrome Finance, which provides essential infrastructure for the decentralised finance scene on the base network. As it currently holds a significant share of the Base lending market, the growth of the overall network could lead to the growth of the protocol.
Seamless has not gained enough market share to cement it as the major lending market. While a $23 million TVL is impressive for a growing project on a growing chain, the speed of development in crypto could see another contender displace Seamless.
Seamless features a native token called SEAM with a maximum supply of 100 million tokens, 8 million of which are in circulation. This may infer that the tokens could suffer from inflationary pressures, especially since it is used to boost rewards for lenders.
While this project has the potential for tremendous growth, its utility will need to outpace its emission for its tokens to remain valuable in the long term. You can buy SEAM on Coinbase.
Echelon Prime is a platform that allows games to integrate crypto mechanics into gameplay by using tokens to unlock tools, weapons, experiences, and levels. The project was initially launched on the Ethereum network but has moved to Base because of its superior speed and cheap gas fees.
Echelon Prime is the first GameFi project on Base, giving in some first-mover advantage. Seeing that it provides infrastructure that several games can use, the project can continue integrating games, thereby growing its user base.
Echelon Prime is only as valuable as the games on its platform. No games means no players and no use case for its native token. While Echelon may be the first GameFi platform on Base, it is not in the wider market or the largest.
Nonetheless, Echelon Prime’s position as the 9th largest GameFi platform by market capitalisation gives room for growth.
The platform is powered by PRIME tokens, which game creators use to access services and by players to pay for tools, weapons, and experiences.
PRIME has a total supply of 111 million tokens, 37.5 million of which are already in circulation. You can buy PRIME on low-fee cryptocurrency exchanges like Bitget.
BaseSwap is a decentralised exchange with an expanded list of features and products, some of which include a token locker, yield farms, an NFT marketplace, a cross-chain bridge, and even games.
Baseswap is ahead in the utility game as it provides an all-inclusive service for swaps, providing liquidity, staking, and yield farming. As the Base network onboards more users, Baseswap could be well-positioned to retain users through its suite of services.
Despite its impressive suite of services, its liquidity pools are still far behind those of projects like Aerodrome, where TVL is concerned, as the protocol has not yet garnered a significant user base.
Baseswap’s native toke, BSX, has a total supply of 10 million tokens. The circulating supply is still unknown, as is normal with new tokens. As such, the market cap is unknown; however, the fully diluted valuation is $1.8 million, which is very low for a project of this scale.
You can buy BSX on exchanges like Uniswap.
The Base blockchain is a Layer 2 network built on top of Ethereum that allows for faster and cheaper transactions. It is a product of the efforts to improve Ethereum’s scalability.
Unfortunately, Ethereum is not very scalable, so the more transactions it has to process, the slower and more expensive it is to process each. These Layer 2 networks relieve some of the computational load of processing transactions.
Layer 2 networks became popular when Ethereum transaction fees were higher than regular people could afford. They separate the execution layer from Ethereum, allowing them to process transactions on a separate (and much faster) network while inheriting Ethereum’s security.
The result is a fast, cheap, secure, and decentralised network.
Networks like Base should not be mistaken for sidechains like Polygon, which are independent blockchains that run alongside Ethereum
Base is popular because of its solid tech stack, vibrant and growing community, and its backing by Coinbase, the largest exchange in the US.
Coinbase developed Base and is transforming it into a step-on point into Web3 for regular users. Thanks to the exchange’s massive user base and popular Web3 wallet, Coinbase can easily funnel users onto the Base network.
Base is a blockchain network; as such, all projects (and tokens) built upon it are called Base chain tokens. However, we must admit that this is an unconventional way to refer to projects built on the Base chain, which is not usually used among industry insiders.
Nonetheless, many projects have been built on the Base network, and their tokens are collectively referred to as Base chain tokens.
For a comprehensive list of Base chain tokens, you may need to use tools like Defillama, Coingecko, and the Base website.
However, it is notable that not all tokens on the Base network are Base chain tokens, only those native to the ecosystem.
Some established protocols, like Uniswap, are multichain, meaning they exist on multiple blockchain networks simultaneously.
When they integrate with a new network, they launch a version of their token native to that network; hence, you may see a protocol like Uniswap with token contracts on multiple blockchain networks.
These multichain tokens are not Base chain tokens as they did not originate from the Base network.
The best crypto Base project for crypto investors varies depending on the type of investor. Each blockchain network usually powers hundreds, if not thousands, of projects, some more unique than others, but all with their offerings.
While we cannot say which project is the best, we can give you the tools to make your own decisions. Thus, to find the best crypto Base project,
A common mistake, especially among would-be crypto investors, is the tendency to focus on tokens instead of the projects to which they belong. This includes buying “cheap” tokens because they are below $1 or looking at a token’s market capitalisation in isolation.
In truth, tokens are only as valuable as the ecosystems they power. For example, Ethereum is as expensive as it is ($3,000 as of writing) because of the value the Ethereum ecosystem creates.
Tokens belonging to ecosystems that do not create value don’t last long. However, also be aware of ecosystems whose values are not captured by their tokens (more on this in the tokenomics point).
This ties into the previous point. Tokens that have utility within their various ecosystems have a higher chance of gaining value in the long term, provided their ecosystems continue to provide value.
Some tokens play vital functions within their ecosystems, like Ethereum, while others exist solely for decentralisation via governance, like Arbitrum.
In this case, Ethereum stands a better chance of increasing in price with time since its value is directly tied to platform use.
Choosing experience involves investing in projects with experienced team members. A good example of this is the case of Do Kwon and the Luna team. Because they lacked sufficient experience with arbitrage-backed stablecoins (as UST was one of the first of its kind), they made mistakes that cost the crypto industry more than $60 billion worth of value.
A team that has experience in the field they are operating in, either in the traditional/Web2 space or in Web3, stand a better chance of creating a product that gains and retains value.
Tokenomics is the economic model governing how value is created and transferred throughout a project’s ecosystem and how tokens represent that value. Most of the time, tokens are used to capture and transmit value across ecosystems.
If projects use sound economic models that capture value with their tokens, then the tokens have a higher chance of increasing in price over time.
To better understand whether projects have sound value-capture models, ask where the value in an ecosystem comes from. If you can easily identify it, that project may have a sound model. If you can’t identify their value sources, then it’s most likely you.
Base memecoins are growing in popularity as a starting point for regular users to get involved in the Web3 meme culture because Base is uniquely positioned to onboard users thanks to Coinbase’s reach and large user base.
Remember that despite the growth of memecoins, they still do not qualify as long-term investment assets, not even in the crypto space. Nonetheless, there are some investment cases for memecoins.
The biggest risk to buying Base coins is rug pulls, which is a situation where a coin’s developers drain the liquidity out of a liquidity pool on a Dex, leaving the investors with worthless tokens.
Rugpulls have become an issue in the memecoin space as most developers remain anonymous, and investors often have to trust that they are not fraudulent.
Luckily, thanks to innovations in the crypto space, this trust does not have to be completely blind, as tools like liquidity lockers can help assure that developers will not pull liquidity from liquidity pools.
Dumps are situations where people who hold large amounts of a token sell all or a significant portion of their holdings in one go, creating tremendous downward pressure, which often crashes the price of the coin.
Aside from rug pulls, dumps are the largest risk to trading memecoins as most that get dumped never rise again.
The regulatory status of Base coins depends more on the project, not the fact that they are on the Base network. This status also depends on the type of project. Some projects, like RWA projects, may need to be regulated to engage the services of custodians. Other projects, like gaming projects, may not need to seek regulation.
To determine which coins are regulated, you’ll need to investigate each token individually. However, one way to narrow your search is to ask which projects offer services in highly regulated sectors.
Sectors that require projects to partner with banks and financial institutions are usually highly regulated, hence the reason we used the RWA example.
Buying into upcoming Base chain projects early can be highly profitable. For example, Aerodrome, the premier decentralised exchange on the Base network, started with a market capitalisation of roughly $4 million but currently sits at $612 million as of writing, a 153x gain.
Your ability to find projects early enough depends on your knowledge of the crypto space and the amount of time you have to dive into ecosystem research.
Nonetheless, keep these points in mind to increase your chances of finding these projects early enough.
Every blockchain ecosystem has a major native Dex, a major native lending market, a major memecoin, a major derivatives trading platform, and a major yield aggregator. While projects in other categories may emerge, these four are key to the growth of the financial markets on every chain.
Consider Ethereum. The major Dex is Uniswap, the major native lending market is Aave, the major derivatives trading platform was dYdX before migrating to a new chain, and the major yield aggregator is EtherFi.
The same applies to every major network. For Base, the major native Dex is Aerodrome, the major lending market, derivatives trading platform, and yield aggregator are yet to be determined because the network is still new, and therein lies opportunities to invest in upcoming projects.
The projects that will fill these spots will grow in value.
While projects that do not have venture capital funding can succeed, and some projects that do have VC funding still fail, VC funding is a bolster for many projects.
However, exercise caution when choosing VC-funded projects as VCs often invest small amounts in several projects with the expectation that a few succeed well enough to offset the losses of many.
This means that even VCs expect a good number of the projects they invest in to fail, so the fact that a project is VC-funded does not guarantee success and should not be used as a solitary measure of potential success.
As much as crypto is gaining mainstream adoption, the fact remains that a significant chunk of crypto apps and tools are still too clunky and technical for retail users.
Most times, the first set of people you see using new tools and apps are developers, power users with technical chops, and airdrop farmers, all of whom have significantly more crypto knowledge than the average Joe.
Hence, the more developers interacting with a project, the higher the chances of the project succeeding.
All the points listed above can only be effected using tools. The earliest investors use tools to monitor the market, find new projects before they launch, and get involved with growing trends.
For example, tools like Defillama can be used to find infrastructure projects for financial markets before they launch their tokens. For example, Defillama lists lending markets on Base that have not yet launched tokens.
To gauge VC backing, use tools like Coincarp or Cryptorank to check what projects are getting funded by top VCs.
Very few people get into projects earlier than airdrop farmers. These people are among the first on the scene and often get free allocations in return for contributing to the early growth of projects.
To get involved with airdrop farming, use sites like Twitter to keep your ears to the ground on new projects and EarniFi or Airdrops.io to keep tabs on ongoing and upcoming airdrops.
Some Base tokens are so new that they may not yet be available on centralised exchanges. In this case, you may need to seek them out on decentralised exchanges. Follow the steps below to do this.
You’ll need a decentralised crypto wallet to access Dexes and explore the Base ecosystem. There are several options available. We used the MetaMask wallet for this guide because it is the most widely used crypto wallet. Navigate to the MetaMask site and download the wallet. You can get it on the Play Store or App Store.
To get some crypto onto your MetaMask wallet, you can either buy on a centralised exchange like Coinbase and send it to your wallet address or buy crypto using a credit card directly on the MetaMask web interface. The wallet developers have made strides in integrating the wallet with payment providers.
Navigate to a decentralised exchange like Aerodrome or Uniswap and search for the name of the token you wish to buy or its contract address. In our example, we connected to the Aerodrome Dex.
We explored the best Base chain tokens and chose Aerodrome as our top choice because of its potential as an essential infrastructure on the network. The major native Dex on blockchain networks usually powers much of the swaps on the network as several other Dex front ends connect to its liquidity pools.
Given that Base has witnessed exponential growth and is expected to onboard millions of users into Web3, Aerodrome is in a prime position to grow even more than it has.
If you would like more options, consider the other eight Base chain tokens on our list, as they are all strong contenders primed for growth.
You may need to buy the newer coins on our list on-chain. In this case, you’ll need a blockchain wallet and some crypto. You can buy crypto on some of the best cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Coinbase or Binance.
The cryptos covered in this guide were chosen through rigorous research. We paid attention to utility, reputation, community, and growth potential.
The 9 tokens listed are the best we found in the various categories we listed them.
Check out our why trust us and how we test pages for more information on our testing process.