Navigating the New Ethereum Layer 2 Landscape: Base, Mantle & Linea

Update 18 Sep 2023 • Reading Time 7 Minute

Reading Time: 7 minutes

The Ethereum layer 2 landscape is rapidly evolving, with new and promising projects emerging all the time. While Polygon, Arbitrum, and Immutable X are well-known and established, the crypto community is now turning its attention to Base, Mantle, and Linea. In this article, we’ll explore the highlights of these three projects and navigate the new Ethereum layer 2 landscape.

Article Summary

✨ Potential Ethereum layer 2 projects like Base, Mantle, and Linea are new players that offer unique technologies with advantages that benefit users.
💰 As of September 15, 2023, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in Base, Mantle, and Linea reached 388 million, 88.2 million, and 49.53 million US dollars, respectively. It indicates significant money flow in the new layer 2 network.
🏬 Coinbase and Consensys are leading crypto companies enhancing the blockchain ecosystem by launching their layer 2 blockchains: Base and Linea.
🪂 Early interaction with these three projects has potential benefits, considering their impressive TVL growth and transaction activity. Especially if one of the protocols on the network launches a token airdrop.

Ethereum’s New Layer 2 Generation

When it comes to Ethereum layer 2, we’re familiar with big projects like Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Immutable X, and a few others that are well-established.

However, at the moment, there are some promising new projects with potential in the layer 2 competitive space, specifically Base, Mantle, and Linea. With the technology they offer, all three have advantages that can benefit users.

As of September 15, 2023, the Total Value Locked (TVL) on the Base, Mantle, and Linea networks reached 388 million, 88.2 million, and 49.53 million US dollars, respectively. This significant amount of money flow indicates that interacting with these three at an early stage has the potential to be profitable.

Let’s continue to explore more about these promising Layer 2 projects.

1. Base

Base is a layer 2 blockchain Ethereum like Mantle and Linea — Source: Base

Base is a layer 2 blockchain created by one of the largest crypto exchanges in the United States, Coinbase. This platform offers low transaction fees with the same level of security as Ethereum.

Base uses OP Stack Optimism in its technology. It eases developers to build dApps and makes the transaction process fast and inexpensive.

One of the dApps that has gained hype among crypto users is Friend.tech. A SocialFi application that allows users to ‘tokenize’ or give value to their social media accounts, especially Twitter accounts.

Friend.tech’s money flow touched 840,000 US dollars with 525,000 transactions on August 21, 2023. It surpassed major dApps protocols such as Lido and Uniswap.

To celebrate the launch of the Base mainnet on August 9, 2023, Coinbase held Onchain Summer. Onchain Summer is a multi-week celebration of art, culture, music, and gaming built on the Base blockchain.

Read more about Base here.

What Makes Base Unique?

Despite being a newcomer to the blockchain world, Base has attracted some major platforms to integrate its system. These include Chainlink, Synthetix, Aave, GMX, Curve, and others.

Besides that, Base has also worked with major companies that participated in its launch, such as Coca-Cola, OpenSea, Atari, and many other leading companies.

Fun Facts about Base

The name Base became a popular topic of conversation during the BALD token rug pull scandal operating on the Base testnet at the end of July 2023. However, Base still received a positive reception, as evidenced by Base’s high TVL of 376.5 million US dollars. It outperformed Polygon zkEVM and Immutable X.
Base will not be launching tokens. One of the reasons for this is that Coinbase already has Coinbase Global (COIN) shares listed on NASDAQ.
A few weeks after its launch, Base had raised over 155 million US dollars on its mainnet.

Also read Exploring BALD: The Meme Token Rug Pull and Strategies to Mitigate Risks.

2. Mantle

Mantle is a new Ethereum layer 2 — Source: Mantle

Mantle Network is an Ethereum layer 2 network developed by BitDAO. BitDAO is a DAO community with the most significant stored assets of 2.1 billion US dollars in various crypto assets.

In July 2023, BitDAO announced the Mantle Network mainnet launch at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) Paris after 6 months of development.

What Makes Mantle Unique?

Mantle’s technology is unique compared to other layer 2 networks, such as Arbitrum and Optimism. Mantle implements a modular architecture that combines the optimistic rollup protocol with EigenDA as the data availability layer.

In addition, BitDAO, as the Mantle developer community, allocated 200 million US dollars in the form of 60M USDx, 30k ETH, and 120M MNT to fund the Mantle ecosystem.

The Mantle ecosystem has been growing since the Mantle mainnet launch on July 17, 2023. Currently, more than 100 dApps are operating on the Mantle network, including Agni Finance, FusionX Finance, Galador, MantleSwap, Lendle, and others.

Explore more about the Mantle ecosystem in this article.

Fun Facts about Mantle

Mantle Network is the result of the BitDAO community’s decision to change the name of BitDAO to Mantle Network. It also made a change to the BIT to MNT token.
Mantle has a market cap of over 1.3 billion US dollars. This amount places Mantle in the 33rd position on Coinmarketcap’s crypto asset list.
In January 2022, Bybit invested 134 million US dollars in BitDAO in ETH, USDT, and USDC.

3. Linea

ConsenSys launches Linea Mainnet — Source: ConsenSys

Linea is a layer 2 network developed by ConsenSys using zero-knowledge (zk) rollup technology. This technology offers a fast transaction process and is 15 times cheaper than Ethereum.

This rollup network, called zkEVM, is connected to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It means that existing Ethereum-based applications can migrate easily to the Linea network.

After three months of development on the testnet, Linea officially announced its mainnet launch on July 11, 2023, at the EthCC Paris event.

ConsenSys is a company focused on developing infrastructure and dApps to support the Ethereum ecosystem. One of ConsenSys’ most extensive products is the Metamask wallet.

What Makes Linea Unique?

Linea’s zkEVM technology differs from other layer 2 technologies like Optimism and Arbitrum. With zkEVM, Linea relies on advanced cryptography and math to ensure robust security without needing external validators.

With the developer-friendly zkEVM, developers of NFT projects, games, and other dApps benefit from low cost, high throughput, and low latency. In addition, Linea supports direct integration with Metamask and several products developed by Consensys, such as Truffle and Infura.

Fun Facts about Linea

In the first month of Linea’s mainnet launch, Linea recorded on-chain activity with over 2.7 million transactions and bridged 26 million US dollars of tokens. It made Linea the fastest-growing zkEVM.
ConsenSys said that it has no plans to launch a Linea platform token.
To drive innovation on Linea, ConsenSys launched the Ecosystem Investment Alliance (EIA), an investment consortium of over 30 leading Venture capitalists (VC).

Highlights of the Base, Mantle, and Linea

Base

Base is one of the most hyped layer 2s. However, the dApps in Base are mostly forks of Uniswap. Therefore, dApps that truly innovate have the potential to get a good deal from Base.
Friend.tech became one of the most hype dApps on the Base network, which, within a week of its launch, generated over 100k users.
You can keep an eye on the progress of the Base ecosystem list on DefiLlama.

Mantle

Mantle has an ecosystem development fund of 200 million US dollars, and it is expected that many dApps will be interested in adopting this network.
The technology in Mantle is different from other layer 2 blockchains. Mantle uses a modular network and utilizes EigenDA for the data availability layer.
Some protocols built on the Mantle network will soon release their tokens. It probably means there will be an announcement about an airdrop in the coming weeks. Examples of protocols operating on Mantle without having their own tokens include AGNI Finance and FusionX.

Linea

ZkEVM is a new technology and is still developing. While promising, it must undergo long-term testing before it can be fully relied upon.
Currently, Linea does not have a platform token. If one day, Consensys announces an airdrop of Linea tokens, users who have been using Linea since the beginning will likely be eligible for the airdrop.

Also read: What is a Crypto Airdrop and How to Get One?

Conclusion

Some of the leading companies in the crypto industry, such as Coinbase and Consensys, have strengthened the blockchain ecosystem by releasing their layer 2 blockchains. This move also has the potential to enhance Ethereum’s position as the dominant layer 1 blockchain in the blockchain ecosystem.

The new generation of layer 2 Ethereum, such as Base, Mantle, and Linea, show significant potential in the blockchain ecosystem. It can be seen from the impressive growth in the number of transactions and Total Value Locked (TVL) on each network.

The development of their ecosystems is worth monitoring as they each have unique characteristics and benefits.

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