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Hi all, happy Tuesday. Majors wobble ahead of this week’s FOMC, while PUMP remains the outperformer.  Yesterday, at BaseCamp 2025, Jesse Pollak teased that Base is exploring the possibility of launching a token. As the leading L2, what could “BASE” be worth, and what would a token accomplish?

Investors are widely anticipating a 25bps rate cut, with the CME FedWatch tool — which forecasts rate movements based on fed funds futures trading — pricing the first rate cut of the year at a 96% probability. Note that a 50bps cut would be a headline surprise, with just a 4% probability priced in.

Back on the crypto front, all eyes were on PUMP during the weekend as it blasted through its all-time high price of $0.0068, hitting a high of $0.0089 on Sunday and cooling off slightly to $0.0086 as of Monday’s close. On Sunday, Pump registered its highest daily revenue ($3.6 million) since Feb. 11, the week of Milei’s LIBRA fiasco. Pump’s annualized revenue run rate is at ~$800 million based on trailing 30-day data, while last week’s revenue of $20 million would put that figure well above $1 billion, provided it’s able to sustain current activity levels. 

The market is realizing Pump’s vision is much more than just a memecoin launchpad. Pump is poised to be the first true breakout app in consumer crypto, competing toe-to-toe with Web2 giants like Twitch. Project Ascend, which introduced dynamic fees to PumpSwap, has been key to the recent virality of Pump’s streams, with new content creators earning hundreds of thousands in rewards out of the gate. Since the change was implemented on Sep. 2, creators on Pump have earned over $24 million in aggregate rewards, with average daily token rewards paid out to creators surpassing $2 million.

Outside of Pump, the other notable outperformers on Monday were ZORA and AERO, which surged 15% and 9%, respectively, on the news that Base is considering launching a network token. In this regard, one could argue that Zora’s fundamentals hardly justify its $790 million fully-diluted valuation. The platform has averaged $25K in daily revenue in the past 30 days, which annualizes to ~$9 million. That places ZORA’s FDV/Sales at 87, pricing significant growth despite weekly revenues declining considerably since July 21-27.

Notably, 65% of the total ZORA supply (185% of float, valued at ~$510 million) earmarked for the treasury (20% allocation), team (18.9%), and investors (26.1%) will begin to vest on Oct. 23. The team and investors both have a 36-month linear vesting schedule, which translates to about $10 million worth of ZORA coming into circulation per month. Note that this figure excludes the Treasury unlocks, which have a 48-month vesting schedule. The supply overhang from the core team and investors remains an important consideration and should be monitored closely. 

— Carlos

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Katana was built by answering a core question: What if a chain contributed revenue back into the ecosystem to drive growth and yield?

We direct revenue back to DeFi participants for consistently higher yields.

Katana is pioneering concepts like Productive TVL (the portion of assets are actually doing work), Chain Owned Liquidity (permanent liquidity owned by Katana to maintain stability), and VaultBridge (putting bridged assets to work generating extra yield for active participants).

Why would Base need a token?

Whether or not Base would have a token has long been a discussion point ever since the L2 launched in mid-2023. On Monday at BaseCamp 2025, Jesse Pollak disclosed that Base is exploring the possibility of launching a token for the L2. 

By all metrics, Base is the leading L2. It consistently accounts for over 70% of L2 gross profit, 70% of L2 transaction activity, $4.4 billion in stablecoins, and ~$20 million in monthly application revenue.

In August, Base generated $6.2 million in network REV, annualized out to $75 million. Base remains one of the only L2s without a token.

As the largest L2 generating the most in profits, what could the Base token be worth? Examining some competitor L2s (Arbitrum, Optimism, and ZKsync), show these tokens trade at lofty price-to-sales ratios of 280x, 820x, and 1600x, respectively. This puts the sector mean at a P/S of 900x. 

Applying this 900x multiple to Base’s $75 million in annualized REV puts a potential FDV on a Base token at $67 billion. To be priced in line with ARB at a 280x multiple, this would price Base’s token at a $21 billion FDV. Are these projections “fair-value” for a Base token? Absolutely not. But it does go to show the market value it could command is consistent with the sector’s multiples. 

The napkin math forecasts are dramatic. Could launching a token really create tens of billions in market value for stakeholders? Coinbase equity is trading at a $84 billion market cap. This puts Coinbase at 7x last quarter’s sales, annualized, while revenues from Base account for less than 1% of the company’s topline sales. Would reattributing this revenue stream from equity holders to an L2 token really deserve a 100x higher multiple? Unlikely; the multiples in the sector are outrageous to begin with.

It’s worth mentioning also that the implications of a Base token would be rife with regulatory scrutiny. Currently, the cash flows of Base’s operations are owned by COIN shareholders, a publicly-listed, registered security. Could a Base token reasonably have a claim on the L2’s cash flows without rugging existing shareholders? And, if the token has no claim, what is it really for?

Decision makers at Coinbase have likely already surveyed the valuation landscape amongst L2s, and they know full well they are sitting on the cash cow of this sector. The decision to launch a token presents tradeoffs, and tradeoffs that may actually favor shareholders. Consider this thought experiment: Say the Base token had a claim on 100% of Base’s gross profit. Coinbase could allocate itself, arbitrarily, two thirds of the Base token supply, with the remainder allocated to ecosystem users and builders. In doing so, Coinbase would forgo $25 million in annual revenue in exchange for a balance sheet asset that perhaps may be worth $14-$44 billion. Forgo $25 million annually in exchange for a one time receipt of tens of billions in token value? I’d take that trade.

While the moonpath on a Base token, its market value, the potential wealth effect of a sizable airdrop, and the implications for ecosystem applications like Aerodrome (which traded 10% higher on the news) present a fun exercise, Polymarket’s line on a Base token is pricing the under that it will launch this year. This market has the probability that Base will launch a token in 2025 at just 16%, suggesting these are matters for next year. 

— Luke

Crypto markets had a slow start to the week, with BTC closing Monday flat and ETH and SOL decreasing by 1.86% and 2.78%, respectively. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit record highs on Monday ahead of the FOMC meeting that will take place between today and tomorrow (Sept. 16-17). Notable outperformers on the equity side included Tesla (TSLA), up 3.56% and attaining its highest price since January, and Alphabet (GOOG), which closed at an all-time high, eclipsing $3 trillion in market cap.

1. Building the largest solana treasury company | Kyle Samani

Kyle Samani joined Jason Yanowitz to discuss the successful $1.65 billion raise for Forward Industries (Nasdaq: FORD). They deep dive into how Forward Industries plans to converge between traditional markets and DeFi, the ultimate vision for the Solana treasury company, the difference between SOL and BTC DATCOs and why stablecoins are crypto's iPhone moment.

2. Token launches in the modern era

Grove Finance published a blog post arguing token launches have shifted from “public upside” to private capture via low-float, high-FDV TGEs — leaving retail as exit liquidity. It contrasts early fair-access eras (ETH, LINK, SOL) with recent post-TGE underperformance (e.g., STRK, SCR) and critiques “industrialized” hype-and-dump dynamics. The piece spotlights partial fixes like Echo’s Sonar (e.g., Plasma’s oversubscribed sale) and proposes a different path for Grove: transparent vesting, clear token economics, and “float first, hype second,” earning valuation in public markets. Grove notes it has no investors and the protocol is already generating revenue.

3. Aave DAO’s state of the union by ACI

Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) published a governance forum note outlining Aave’s turnaround and next-phase strategy. ACI proposes focusing on Mainnet (which constitutes 87% of YTD revenue) and closing underperforming L2/alt-L1 deployments. It would end most “friendly fork” arrangements — citing Spark as “extremely damaging to Aave” — and deprecate v3 instances with the sole exception of Prime. The ultimate goal is to transform Aave into a high-margin business, making the case that doubling down on GHO growth will be key to achieve this. ACI suggests enshrining buybacks at, or close to, current levels ($500K-$1 million per week) to maintain a public signal to the market of confidence in AAVE while being able to spend aggressively on distribution and growth deals using the protocol’s reserves over the next 18 months.

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