Base is one of the most used blockchains in 2025, and consistently ranks just below Solana in onchain volume and has a growing and maturing ecosystem. Some of the largest protocols across DeFi and AI verticals originated on Base, and in particular spawned VIRTUALS which grew an entire ecosystem of its own.
As of May 2025, VIRTUALS was one of the strongest AI coins that led the pack after the previous AI Agent mania of late 2024 which saw every AI Agent protocol suffer significant drawdowns. Most have never recovered, whilst VIRTUALS has rebounded well and one of the best performers this month.
The Base ecosystem is very active in AI, with projects such as Simulacrum, BNKR, CLANKER, Heurist and Giza all targeting different use cases such as custom agents, ease of friction between utilizing blockchain with GPT like prompts and DeFAI and yield optimization. It competes only with Solana in the AI Agent ecosystem development race, and developer activity continues to grow onchain.
Recent data from Nansen (Source: https://x.com/Chyan/status/1920651102498009342?t=0RFwCQ6hnFgtJuWa0kklcQ&s=19) indicates that the Base ecosystem and its smart money are buying AI Agent projects during this second wave in May. Overall, the Base ecosystem prefers to buy AI projects with a dominant mindshare as the majority of its volumes outside of CBBTC and AERO pairs are AI Agent related.
We believe that there are opportunities on Base, as one of the leading blockchains by flow and activity and AI Agents are still where mindshare is at. It is likely that after the initial mania of the first AI Agent season, where Base had some outperformers but overall lagged behind Solana, that Base and its ecosystem will be attempting to grow agents with genuine PMF and value accrual to the token. In general, Base has less tokens launched than Solana and there are less projects competing for the same attention.
The majority of the easy ideas were attempted in the first iteration of the AI Agent mania, and it is unlikely that clones will be able to get the same mindshare this time around. We are bullish on those with real PMF and trackable metrics, and believe that this time around investors will be more likely to bid those projects and flows will be concentrated into a new cohort of “winners” that we are already taking positions on.
We have taken positions in some Base AI Agent coins in a few verticals (DeFAI, Framework), with the thesis that there will be stronger flows entering the Base ecosystem and stickier holders who will rally to the few leaders on the chain and push it to new highs, it is often easier on Base for the community to identify vertical leaders and position with a longer term approach, which we believe is already occurring and beneficial for the long term growth of the ecosystem.
About Vestun
Vestun is a Swiss-regulated capital holding with a thesis-driven approach, primarily focused on digital assets and AI. We engage across public and private markets through syndication, incubation, and strategic alignment with institutional and corporate partners.