Base batches users' transactions and submits them to Ethereum, paying a share of the transaction fees to Ethereum validators (expense).

Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) offering a secure, low-cost, builder-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build onchain.

Coinbase team owns and governs the protocol. Coinbase is a public company and its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Vanguard Group, ARK Investment Management, etc.

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Blockchains (L2)

Base

# Base Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

Base expenses represent the total operational costs incurred by Base blockchain in its role as an Ethereum Layer 2 solution. This metric captures the comprehensive cost structure of running Base, including settlement costs paid to Ethereum for data availability and security, revenue sharing payments to the Optimism Superchain ecosystem, and any token incentive programs. The expenses are calculated by summing three distinct cost components: token incentives (currently zero), cost of revenue from L1 settlement fees, and Superchain fees paid to Optimism.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation draws from multiple blockchain data sources:
- **Ethereum transaction records**: Transaction data from Ethereum mainnet, specifically transactions sent by Base's batch submission address to process L2 transaction batches
- **Base contract event logs**: Parsed `FeeDisburser_FeesDisbursed` events from Base's fee distribution contract that track revenue sharing payments
- **End-of-day price feeds**: ETH price data used for USD conversion of all fee amounts
- **Base transaction records**: Transaction data from Base blockchain used to establish the temporal structure for metrics

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Token incentives
- **Purpose**: Captures costs from token reward programs or incentives paid to users or developers
- **Logic**: Currently hardcoded to zero for Base, indicating no active token incentive programs. The component maintains the same timestamp and dimensional structure as other expense components but sets the `token_incentives` value to 0 for all periods
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` (always 0), `timestamp`, `timestamp_grain` (day), `chain_id` (base)

### Component B: Cost of revenue (L1 settlement fees)
- **Purpose**: Calculates the fees Base pays to Ethereum for settlement and data availability services
- **Logic**: Identifies Ethereum transactions sent by Base's designated batch sender address (`0x5050f69a9786f081509234f1a7f4684b5e5b76c9`) to Base's null address (`0xff00000000000000000000000000000000008453`). These transactions represent Base submitting transaction batches to Ethereum for finality. The cost includes both regular gas fees and blob gas fees (for EIP-4844 blob transactions). Gas costs are calculated as `gas_used * gas_price` plus `blob_gas_used * blob_gas_price`, then converted from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18. Daily aggregation sums all settlement transactions for each day
- **Key fields**: `l1_settlement_amount` (total settlement cost in ETH), `gas_used_amount`, `gas_price`, `blob_gas_used_amount`, `blob_gas_price`

### Component C: Superchain fees
- **Purpose**: Tracks revenue sharing payments made by Base to the broader Optimism Superchain ecosystem
- **Logic**: Extracts data from Base's `FeeDisburser` contract `FeesDisbursed` events, specifically focusing on the `paidToOptimism` field which represents the portion of Base's revenue shared with Optimism. The amount is converted from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18, then aggregated daily. This represents Base's contribution to the Superchain collective as part of the revenue sharing model
- **Key fields**: `optimism_amount` (amount paid to Optimism), `totalFeesDisbursed`, `account_address` (FeeDisburser contract)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The three expense components are combined using a UNION ALL operation, creating a unified dataset with consistent schema across all expense types. Each component contributes its daily expense amounts with matching timestamp and dimensional fields
- **Currency conversion**: All ETH amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day ETH price feeds. The conversion applies to the final calculated amounts after gas fee calculations and wei-to-ETH conversions
- **Time aggregation**: All calculations use daily boundaries with timestamp truncation to day granularity. Settlement fees and Superchain fees are summed within each day
- **Final calculation**: Total daily expenses equal the sum of token incentives (0) plus cost of revenue (L1 settlement fees in USD) plus Superchain fees (payments to Optimism in USD). The result represents Base's complete operational cost structure for each day

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

Base

Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown