Coinbase's Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 network, announced a major performance upgrade roadmap aimed at dramatically increasing scalability and reducing transaction costs. Lead developer Jesse Pollak outlined plans to achieve sub-$0.01 transaction fees, 200 millisecond confirmation times, and ultimately reach 1 million transactions per second (TPS) on Base. Near-term, Base aims to scale to over 200 TPS and implement new technology called FlashBlocks, which enables preconfirmation blocks allowing near-instant transaction finality under 200 milliseconds. This is half the block time of Solana and comparable to Sui’s finality targets.
FlashBlocks split each full block into sub-blocks, keeping the full block time at 2 seconds but enabling earlier transaction finalization. The upgrade roadmap includes increasing gas throughput capacity tenfold from 25 Mgas/s to 250 Mgas/s by year-end 2025, supporting higher throughput and fee targets. Additionally, Base plans to decentralize core network logic by moving it onto Ethereum’s Layer-1 through smart contracts, allowing multiple independent validators and developers to contribute to the network’s evolution.
Base currently averages around 60 TPS but is scaling quickly, with total value locked (TVL) surpassing $4 billion in 2025, signaling renewed investor confidence. Performance targets position Base as a direct challenger to high-throughput Layer-1s like Solana and newer chains such as Sui. While Solana boasts a theoretical peak of 65,000 TPS but averages around 740 TPS in practice, and Sui has demonstrated burst TPS of up to 297,000 in testing, Base’s goal of 1 million TPS would dramatically exceed existing throughput levels.
Strategically, Base serves as a flagship project in Coinbase’s Web3 ambitions to expand Ethereum adoption through low-cost, fast transactions with tight Coinbase ecosystem integration. The project aims for 25 million users, 25,000 developers, and $100 billion in assets on Base by the end of 2025. While Ethereum itself continues enhancing scalability through upgrades like Pectra and Fusaka, Base is moving aggressively to capture near-term Layer-2 dominance by combining scalability improvements with decentralization and fair execution mechanisms.