Analysis of the Revenue Sources of Base and Its Trading Sorting Mechanism

Base is the most profitable platform in the Ethereum Layer 2 network, often surpassing the daily revenue of all other top Rollup projects combined. Over the past 180 days, Base’s average daily revenue reached $185,291, far exceeding the $55,025 of the second-ranked Arbitrum.

The trading sorting mechanism of Base is determined by two factors: the transaction submission time and the fee relative to the transaction complexity. This mechanism is similar to the operating model of logistics companies, creating a dynamic auction market that balances delivery time and economic incentives.

Transactions on Base include base fees and optional priority fees. The sorter focuses on the quote per unit of Gas rather than the total fees to maximize the yield of computational resources. This EIP-1559 style fee model creates a continuous public market auction environment for block space, allowing revenue to grow directly with the demand for block space and the profitability of on-chain transactions.

In contrast, Arbitrum mainly adopts a “first come, first served” model, where users primarily compete on latency rather than economic cost. Although Arbitrum later introduced the Timeboost feature, its mechanism is still more predictive than reactive, making it less effective than Base’s system in capturing sudden high-yield trading opportunities.

The priority fees of Base are the main source of its revenue, accounting for 86.1% of the average daily earnings. The priority fees from the top slot of the block are significant contributors, with transactions from only the first slot of the block contributing 30% to 45% of the daily earnings. The priority fees mainly come from a small number of addresses; over the past year, 64.9% of the priority fees were generated from just 250 addresses.

The implementation of Flashblocks has improved the transaction processing speed of Base by introducing the concept of “sub-blocks”, allowing users to obtain faster transaction pre-confirmations. This change means that high-priority fee transactions may fall into the overall “confirmed block” at a lower slot, but are at the top of the “pre-confirmation sub-block”.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) activity on Base is very active, with the largest DEX trading volume among all Ethereum L2 networks, accounting for 50% to 65% of the DEX trading volume on L2 networks. The DEX activity is an important reason why the priority fees on Base remain high, with 50% to 70% of the total fees earned by the sorters each day coming from the priority fees of DEX trades.

Overall, the revenue of Base mainly comes from Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) transactions, especially competitive activities such as DEX arbitrage. Its EIP-1559 style fee model transforms block space competition from a delay-based race into an efficient economic auction, enabling sorters to capture and commercialize the competitive value of block space more effectively.