Share this article
Early Base Whales Have an Affinity for Meme Tokens, Nansen Says
The top 22 depositors to Base as of July 31 have allocations in a telegram trading bot token, several meme tokens and an on-chain casino token.
Updated Aug 10, 2023, 5:32 p.m. Published Aug 9, 2023, 7:31 p.m.
Coinbase’s Ethereum-adjacent blockchain Base technically opened to the public today. But crypto whales have already spent days trading high-risk tokens on the new layer 2 network as well as other blockchains.
Beyond their holdings of market-leader ETH, 22 high-rolling depositors to Base have large positions in Arbitrum’s governance token ARB, casino token RLB and memecoins BALD, TOSHI, PEPE and HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu which has the ticker, BITCOIN, not the famous crypto but rather another meme coin, according to a report by Nansen.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
UNIBOT, the Telegram trading bot token, is also among the top tokens held by these whales.
Nansen said these 22 whales display crypto-native tendencies and have each bridged over 100 ETH (worth $185,100) since July 31, when Base was accessible to users willing to interact directly with its smart contract through a one-way bridge. More casual users waited until today, when Base’s frontend went live alongside an exit ramp that allows them to bridge out of the ecosystem, and back to Ethereum.
One wallet was made in 2017, while half of the early Base whales were fresh wallets created this year. Early Base whales have also been active in competing Ethereum scaling solutions Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync Era and Polygon zkEVM.
“There is a heavy memecoin bias in the selection of these whales,” said Nansen analyst Niklas Polk. “There was not much else to do on Base except aping meme coins, hence most of the whales in the report have some affinity to this.”
The 22 early base whales, which had the most interactions with 1inch, Uniswap, Base, 0x, USDC and Unibot, “show how heavily leaning towards Ethereum and L2 ecosystems,” wrote Nansen research analyst Jake Kennis. “Their interactions with well-established DEXs, L2 bridges, and especially the noticeable presence of Unibot, shows the adoption of Telegram bots and new applications.”
“With more apps coming online (DEXs/lending), will likely see a more mature ecosystem not solely revolved around memecoins,” Kennis said to CoinDesk in a telegram message.
Mais para você
O que saber:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
Mais para você
Cascade Unveils 24/7 Neo-Brokerage Offering Perpetuals on Cryptos, U.S. Stocks
The platform will let retail traders use one margin account to trade round-the-clock perpetual markets.
O que saber:
- Cascade has introduced a 24/7 brokerage-style app for perpetual markets spanning crypto, U.S. equities and private-asset exposure.
- The firm is pitching a single, unified margin account with direct-to-bank U.S. dollar capability for deposits and withdrawals.
- The company has raised $15 million from investors including Polychain Capital, Variant and Coinbase Ventures.
Top Stories
