According to a recent interview with Unchained, Coinbase's Level 2 project, Base, has announced it is exploring the possibility of issuing a token. This move marks a significant shift from Base's previous position that it had never planned to issue a token. Ryan Ye, a former member of Coinbase Ventures, predicts that the initial market capitalization of the Base token could be approximately $20 billion, with the potential to rise to $40 billion to $50 billion. He believes that the token issuance will significantly boost the development of the Base ecosystem and attract more developers and users.

Ryan speculated that the token distribution could include 20%-40% going to Coinbase, approximately 20% going to an independent community treasury, and the remainder distributed to the community via airdrops or public sales. He also suggested that the Base token could function similarly to Ethereum's ETH, partially used for on-chain fee burning while potentially becoming a core liquidity asset in DeFi.

Furthermore, Base has integrated with Solana on its testnet. Ryan believes this demonstrates Base's recognition of Solana as its primary competitor and its efforts to attract developers. He noted that the competition between Base and Solana primarily centers on user culture and DeFi liquidity, with Base favoring DeFi liquidity over Solana, which excels in user experience and consumer culture.