Base memecoin Based Brett threatens to flip Solana’s BONK

Amid a big push for developers to experiment with Base, native memecoin Based Brett has rocketed

article-image

BRETT and Adobe stock modified by Blockworks

share

Based Brett is off to a ripper onchain summer.

Base’s biggest memecoin has gone from under $10 million market capitalization to nearly $2 billion in 101 days.

BRETT is now a whisker away from flipping Solana dog coin BONK (there’s less than 7% between them this morning). 

BONK hit an all-time high in March and has since retraced by about 40%, while BRETT — which launched only days earlier — has gone 200x.

BRETT would still need to flip WIF to properly unseat the Solana dog coins

Read more: These cryptocurrencies hit all-time high alongside bitcoin’s recent pump

It’s rare for memecoins to grow that big so quickly. Compiling market data for about two dozen of the biggest memecoins out there shows BRETT was the third-fastest to hit a $1.5 billion market cap. 

The other Solana dog coin, dogwifhat, did it in about 80 days, a slightly quicker timeframe. Meanwhile, it took floki — Binance Smart Chain’s top memecoin named after Elon Musk’s dog — another three weeks to do the same.

Pepe, on Ethereum, otherwise briefly hit $1.5 billion in the first 20 days but soon corrected to well under $500 million. It took almost a year for PEPE to run it back.

Most memecoins are stuck below $1 billion for at least their first 200 days

BRETT and PEPE share a parallel crypto universe. They’re both homages to characters in Matt Furie’s webcomic Boy’s Club, which is centered around four college roommates hanging out and playing video games.

Read more: Empire Newsletter: Based Brett kicks off onchain summer

There’s Andy, a dog-like character that eats hot dogs, Landwolf, a scruffy party dude, Pepe the Frog, a “little-brother” type that goes with the flow, and Brett, a tall blue creature who really likes to dance.

Neither BRETT or PEPE — or any other memecoin based on Boy’s Club — have any official ties to Furie, who previously launched a flurry of legal fights to prevent Pepe the Frog from being co-opted by the right, including a $15,000 settlement with Alex Jones’ Info Wars.

Loading Tweet..
As usual, perpetual futures markets quickly follow

While there have been popular cryptocurrencies based on Pepe the Frog before, Furie hasn’t really publicly acknowledged either PEPE or BRETT (Blockworks has reached out to the Based Brett team).

Furie was asked about PEPE in a Twitter Spaces last May — around the time of one of the coin’s first major rallies — but didn’t seem totally fussed. 

“Actually this is the first I’ve heard of it [PEPE]…I’ve heard of Ethereum, Bitcoin and Dogecoin, is it like that? … Dogecoin’s the best, I’m a Dogecoin maxi,” he said.

Still, BRETT’s growth comes amid a push from Base and founder Jesse Pollak to inspire devs to experiment on the Ethereum layer-2 over the summer — Onchain Summer.

An additional 3.4 million contracts have been deployed on Base already this summer, the largest uptick since last September — just after the chain came online

And, so far, it seems to be working. Per Blockworks Research data, last week saw the third-highest number of transactions on Base in history, the highest stablecoin transfer volumes at almost $8.4 billion, and the highest-ever unique active addresses at 1.84 million (although that shouldn’t be conflated with unique users, which is practically impossible to measure).

Memecoins like BRETT aren’t the be-all-and-end-all of Base, and the whole point of Onchain Summer is to build other cool stuff on the network.

But a mascot surely can’t hurt. Especially one that might flip Solana’s BONK.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template Presentation.jpg

Research

The Solana validator landscape has changed drastically over the past year. The chain now has 1,332 active validators with 380.9 million SOL staked (63.9% of supply) as of February 2025. Validator revenue had diversified beyond inflationary rewards (still making up 55%) to include Jito tips (30%), priority fees (24%), and base fees (<1%), in January, especially with the increased activity on Solana. Since then, issuance has become dominant again (76%), while Jito tips (14%), priority fees (9%), and base fees (less than 1%) have reduced in share of February 2025. There has been a strong shift towards non-inflationary revenue sources, which have become more central to validator economics as priority fees and off-chain blockspace auctions gain traction. Client diversity has also improved drastically, with implementations such as Agave, Jito-Solana, and Frankendancer already in use, and upcoming clients like Firedancer and Sig expected to further strengthen resilience and reduce reliance on a single codebase.

article-image

BWR analyst Carlos Gonzalez Campo explains the consequences of SOL inflation and transfers lost to “leaky buckets”

article-image

Empire co-host Santiago Santos makes the case that memecoins have actually helped push infra forward…just not in the way you think

article-image

A16z Crypto lists seven buckets for tokens and recommendations for how to regulate them, in a filing submitted to the SEC

article-image

New model aims to resolve trading inefficiencies with a single execution layer and market maker changes

article-image

Investors navigating BTC face short-term unpredictability, influence from other markets

article-image

The GENIUS Act aims to establish regulatory guidelines for stablecoins