# Base Settled About $565 Billion in Stablecoins in June, Challenging Ethereum's Grip on Crypto Payments

Coinbase's layer-2 network is now moving dollar volume that rivals its parent chain, shifting where settlement fees and routing power accumulate.

- Published: 2026-07-08T05:13:36.422Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/crypto/2026-07-08/base-settled-about-565-billion-in-stablecoins-in-june-challe
- Publisher: Polylog (Crypto desk)
- Section: crypto
- Sources: [CryptoSlate](https://cryptoslate.com/base-moved-565b-in-stablecoins-revealing-that-ethereum-could-lose-ownership-of-the-crypto-payment-layer/)



## What this means

The contested layer in tokenized dollars is shifting from who issues the coin to who controls the routing path between wallet and merchant. If stablecoin settlement concentrates on Base, Coinbase captures sequencer fees and gatekeeping power, while Ethereum base-layer fee destruction and, by extension, one support for ether's valuation weaken. Ether holders and Ethereum stakers are the exposed parties, and Coinbase shareholders are the direct beneficiaries.

## What to watch

- Whether major stablecoin issuers announce native deployment or preferential routing on Base rather than Ethereum mainnet, which would confirm the migration is issuer-driven rather than incidental.
- Base's progress toward Stage 2 decentralization, because a payment layer controlled by a single sequencer carries counterparty and censorship risk that a genuinely permissionless one does not.
- Ethereum base-layer fee-destruction trends, since a sustained low rate changes the supply dynamics that underpin ether.