Coinbase-backed Base Maps Ambitious Scaling Plan Challenging Solana, Sui

Coinbase’s Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 network, is gearing up for a major performance overhaul. In a May 24, 2025 announcement, Base lead developer Jesse Pollak laid out aggressive targets to vastly outpace current layer-1 rivals.

The plan calls for sub-$0.01 transaction fees, 200 ms confirmation times and ultimately 1 million transactions per second (TPS) on Base.

In the near term Base will scale to “over 200 TPS,” while building toward its ultimate goal of 1,000,000 TPS. The roadmap emphasizes speed and cost: Pollak said the upgrades are designed to “reduce transaction confirmation times to 200 ms and keep network fees consistently under $0.01”.

FlashBlocks and Decentralization Roadmap

A centerpiece of the upgrade is the new FlashBlocks mechanism. FlashBlocks will create “preconfirmation blocks” that let users see near-instant results in under 200 ms.

In effect, FlashBlocks split each full block into sub-blocks: Base’s full block time remains 2 seconds, but FlashBlocks let some transactions finalize far sooner.

For comparison, Solana’s full block time is 400 ms, and it has a similar “shreds” feature; Base’s FlashBlocks bring its effective block interval to 200 ms. Pollak says FlashBlocks are already in testnet trials, with a mainnet launch targeted by summer 2025.

The upgrade also pushes Base toward greater decentralization. Base will move core logic (such as state transition) onto Ethereum’s Layer 1 via smart contracts.

That change “would allow multiple independent developers and validators to shape the network’s evolution,” Pollak noted.

In parallel, Base is improving hardware capacity: it will raise gas throughput from 25 Mgas/s now to 50 Mgas/s by Q2 2025 and to 250 Mgas/s by year-end. This tenfold gas capacity jump is meant to support the throughput and fee goals announced.

According to the Base team’s updates, the sequence will be: in Q2 2025 raise gas to 50 Mgas/s, deploy FlashBlocks on mainnet by summer, then continue optimizations through the fall.

Pollak emphasized that each upgrade — lower latencies, lower fees, higher gas limits — will make Base more “scalable and user-friendly”.

By end-2025, Base expects a 100× capacity boost over today, putting it in direct competition with fast chains like Solana and Sui.

Performance: Solana and Sui Benchmarks

The Coinbase layer 2 project targets are calibrated against ambitious peers. Solana, a leading high-throughput L1, can, in theory, hit 65,000 TPS, but in practice, its live throughput is much lower.

Recent data show Solana’s average TPS around 740, with fees measured in fractions of a cent per transaction. Despite capable bandwidth, Solana’s real-world transactions rarely approach its theoretical peak.

Its community also boasts large developer momentum: an Electric Capital survey found Solana added 7,625 new developers in 2024 – more than any other chain.

Sui, a newer Layer-1 built by Mysten Labs, takes a different approach with parallel “move” transactions. In live operation, Sui’s mainnet hit 5,414 TPS at its 90-day peak in mid-2023, with 100% uptime.

Labs’ tests have shown Sui can theoretically scale into the hundreds of thousands of TPS; a stress test with 100 validators achieved up to 297,000 TPS in bursts (finality 480 ms).

Crucially, Sui’s horizontal scaling design kept gas fees flat under heavy load. As Sui claims, its fees remain stable even at high concurrency, letting applications scale without fee spikes.

On adoption, Sui’s developer count is smaller but growing: by mid-2024 Sui had roughly 1,400 monthly active developers, up 219% year-on-year.

In short, Base aims to surpass these numbers. Its sub-$0.01 fee goal is on par with both Solana and Sui’s low-fee models, and its 200 ms confirmation goal is half Solana’s full block time and on the order of Sui’s finality target.

If Base reaches 1 million TPS, it would vastly exceed the current live throughput on any chain. For now, Base’s actual throughput is far lower. Messari reports 60 TPS average recently, but the announced roadmap compresses that gap.

Coinbase’s Strategic Context

Base is a flagship for Coinbase’s Web3 strategy. Coinbase, the NASDAQ-listed crypto exchange, developed Base to drive Ethereum adoption by its user base.

The network offers low-cost transfers and tight integration with Coinbase wallets and services. Coinbase has staked big on Base’s growth: the project’s own 2025 targets include onboarding 25 million users, 25,000 developers, and $100 billion in assets on Base.

According to Coinbase, Base will focus on supporting developers, expanding liquidity, and decentralizing block capacity to hit these goals.

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