Author: Jiawei @IOSG
▲ Source: Jon Charbonneau
A while ago, I couldn't help but laugh when I came across this tweet from Jon Charbonneau. When Base is called the "White BNB Chain," what is this joke really saying?
In Haseeb's article "Blockchains are cities," Ethereum and Solana were compared to New York and Los Angeles, respectively. If we use the same analogy:
BNB Chain is a port city that never sleeps, carrying the massive traffic from Binance. Cargo ships come and go, the market is noisy, with street stalls and exchanges side by side. It doesn't matter where you come from, only whether you can participate immediately. Gas is low, the pace is fast, new projects launch every day—some make money, some leave. You don't need to understand urban planning or subscribe to any particular ideology—just know where the action is and where the opportunities lie, and you'll survive.
Base, on the other hand, is a new city built on Ethereum's values, still under rapid construction. Roads are being paved, communities are forming, and rules are being debated. It lacks the hustle and bustle of a port, but it has attracted a large number of engineers, creators, and institutions to settle in early. They're not in a hurry to make quick money but are instead thinking: if truly mass-market on-chain applications emerge in the next decade, where should they be born?
The same crypto world is diverging into different cities, different residents, and different lifestyles.
Understanding the differences between these two cities is perhaps far more important than arguing over which chain is better.
Two Parallel Cultures
If we place BNB Chain and Base on the same map, they appear to be competing; but if we shift our perspective to users and culture, we see that this is more like the parallel growth of two worldviews.
BNB Chain and Base essentially represent two different user structures, traffic sources, and growth logics. The former is rooted in Asian and emerging markets, while the latter has grown out of the Western developer community. Rather than simply understanding them as competitors, it's more accurate to say they are the result of the natural stratification of crypto users.
▲ Source: bnbchain.org
BNB Chain's user profile is very clear.
A large number of users come from Binance's long-accumulated retail base, many of whom are using on-chain products for the first time. They are primarily distributed in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and they are not fixated on "purity of decentralization." Their focus is extremely pragmatic:
Is the gas low enough? Are transactions fast enough? Can I participate in hot projects as soon as they launch?
For these users, a chain is not an ideology but a tool. As long as it's usable, cheap, and profitable, whether it's centralized or semi-centralized is not a primary concern. This also explains why BNB Chain's ecosystem has always revolved around efficiency, scale, and application density.
▲ Source: base.org
Base's user base is different.
They are more often Coinbase users and "overflow" from the Ethereum ecosystem, with a deeper understanding of blockchain and a greater willingness to discuss underlying design issues. These users care about Base's relationship with the Ethereum mainnet, its degree of decentralization, the technical roadmap of L2, and even the orthodoxy of its culture and narrative.
In their eyes, blockchain is not just a tool for completing transactions but also a space for self-expression, community building, and creative experimentation.
It is this difference in user attributes that profoundly shapes the two chains' distinct cultural genes.
BNB Chain has chosen a path closer to Web2's consumer internet: ecosystem integration, bringing as many functions, applications, and scenarios into the same system as possible. For emerging market users, this "all-in-one" model significantly reduces decision-making costs and learning barriers, making the on-chain experience more similar to the internet products they are familiar with.
Base, on the other hand, is more like an open experimental field, willing to reserve sufficient space and patience for developers and creators. It is not in a hurry to cover all scenarios but prioritizes letting the right culture and tools settle first.
From this perspective, BNB Chain and Base are not competing for the same users but growing in the soil each is best suited for.
They are not opposites but two reasonable answers given by the same industry under different cultural backgrounds.
Similarities and Differences in Vertical Integration
Over the past few years, major exchanges have almost simultaneously done one thing:
No longer satisfied with being just a "platform for matching orders," they have extended their business reach to public chains and wallets, among other deeper layers.
The business logic is actually quite simple.
If an exchange can only engage with users at the single moment of "buying" and "selling," then user value is discrete and temporary; but once an exchange controls the chain and wallet, the user's value path is extended, becoming a lifecycle with multiple touchpoints that can be cycled repeatedly.
When users complete funding, on-chain activities, dApp usage, participation in new projects, and return to the exchange for trading all within the same system, the exchange is no longer just an endpoint but the start and end of the entire on-chain journey. Each additional step increases the user's switching cost and enhances stickiness. This is the real goal of vertical integration: turning one-time transactional relationships into long-term retention relationships.
More importantly, this structure can directly amplify liquidity and trading volume.
The continuous emergence of new tokens and new projects on-chain is essentially a "continuous asset creation" capability. And when an exchange controls both the chain and the listing and pricing power of contracts, this on-chain "coin minting ability" can be seamlessly converted into spot trading pairs and derivative targets, ultimately沉淀 as continuous fee income.
From this perspective, BNB Chain and Base are both typical examples of exchange vertical integration strategies, but they each amplify different strengths.
▲ Source: IOSG
BNB Chain's core competitiveness comes from Binance itself.
As an exchange with one of the largest user bases and trading depths globally, Binance has an unparalleled ability to distribute traffic instantly. New projects launching on BNB Chain don't need to educate the market from scratch and rarely go through long cold-start periods. A large number of users can directly migrate from the exchange to the chain to participate and quickly return to the exchange to trade after completing interactions. This "frictionless back-and-forth" path makes BNB Chain more like a high-speed channel for applications.
Behind this model is Binance's strong exchange DNA:
Quick response to market trends, deep understanding of user behavior, and highly mature traffic operations. BNB Chain does not pursue slow, meticulous ecosystem building but is better at scaling a new narrative to its maximum potential in a short time.
▲ Source: IOSG
Base's vertical integration path is noticeably different.
It does not attempt to replicate BNB Chain's speed but instead leverages the compliance brand, fiat on-ramps, and institutional credibility that Coinbase has long accumulated in the US market to build a completely different trust structure. As the first US-listed cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase's experience operating within regulatory frameworks is itself a scarce resource. This also makes Base naturally carry a "institution-friendly" label.
For institutional investors, enterprise applications, and developers sensitive to compliance boundaries, Base provides an environment where they can experiment with confidence and build for the long term. Coupled with Coinbase's long-term deep involvement in the Ethereum ecosystem and continuous investment in developer tools and infrastructure, Base has gradually developed a distinct "builder-friendly" culture.
If BNB Chain is more like an efficient commercialization testing ground, then Base is closer to a future-oriented infrastructure platform.
The former excels at turning traffic into scale quickly, while the latter excels at沉淀 trust into an ecosystem slowly.
From an exchange's perspective, these two paths are not right or wrong; they simply amplify their respective strongest capabilities.
And it is this difference that makes BNB Chain and Base the two most noteworthy and representative samples of exchange vertical integration today.
Wallets—The Final Battle?
▲ Source: IOSG, TokenTerminal
Judging from community sentiment, the Binance Web3 Wallet is not very popular, but it undeniably leads in top-tier traffic. For many Binance users, the first time they use the Web3 Wallet often comes from a very specific scenario: they want to participate in a new launch, farm an airdrop, or get into a hot project as soon as possible, but it's not yet available on the exchange.
Hence, the exchange's built-in wallet appears.
You don't need a seed phrase, don't need to understand complex account models, and may not even clearly realize, "I'm now using an independent wallet."
The entire process—from funding and swapping to cross-chain, authorization, and interaction—is an incredibly smooth and effortless path.
Behind this is Binance's signature ability: simplifying complex financial operations.
This is also why the Binance Web3 Wallet naturally fits the characteristics of the BNB Chain ecosystem—
Trends emerge quickly, project density is high, and user behavior is highly concentrated in short cycles.
In an on-chain statistic from 2025, the Binance Wallet's daily transaction volume once reached approximately $92.6 million, capturing nearly 57.3% of the decentralized wallet transaction market share—a figure that exceeded the sum of all independent wallets.
Users don't need to remember seed phrases or leave the app to complete cross-chain, swaps, farming, or airdrop participation. This frictionless experience is something many independent wallets cannot easily replicate.
The Coinbase Wallet (Base App) has a completely different vibe. According to the latest market statistics, the Base App user base has reached about 11 million, ranking among the top self-custody wallets globally.
It was designed from the start to be a product that can exist independently of the exchange. This also means the Base App has a noticeably steeper learning curve.
But once this process is complete, the user's mindset shifts: this is "my wallet," not "I'm using Coinbase." This design is highly consistent with Base's overall direction. Base is not in a hurry to quickly funnel all users toward a particular killer app but is more concerned with whether people are willing to stay long-term, using the same wallet and the same address to repeatedly build their on-chain identity.
Thus, you'll see that Base App's power users are often also: early adopters of applications on Base, core participants in NFTs, social, and creator tools, and people more sensitive to product experience and long-term narratives.
Within the Binance Web3 Wallet system, it's easier for applications with strong financial attributes, short cycles, high-frequency interactions, and the ability to quickly absorb exchange traffic to succeed. In the Base App + Base ecosystem, products that are user retention-oriented, more sensitive to UX, community, and long-term relationships, not急于 to monetize but willing to gradually accumulate real users are more likely to thrive.
Conclusion
▲ Source: IOSG
The author believes the industry is most likely to see two types of ecosystems in the future:
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CEX-led super ecosystems (Binance, Coinbase)
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Community-led large-scale public infrastructure (Ethereum, Solana)
BNB Chain and Base will not replace each other.
The global crypto user base is not homogeneous. Emerging markets need low barriers to entry, high efficiency, and strong applications; Western markets need compliance, developer friendliness, and cultural认同. These two types of demand will not disappear in the foreseeable future.
A more realistic scenario is that infrastructure like wallets, cross-chain, and account abstraction will gradually smooth out usage differences; users will no longer "belong to only one chain" but will flow between different ecosystems.
From this perspective, BNB Chain and Base are more like two nodes in the same system: one responsible for pushing Web3 to a larger scale, the other for pushing Web3 to a more mature form.
If early public chain competition was like fighting for the "only operating system," the current competition is closer to "different platforms jointly building the internet ecosystem."
The real winners may not be a particular chain itself, but rather the applications and teams that can understand both ecosystems and freely switch between them.
