The standard market narrative says crypto has narrowed into four winning categories: perpetuals, memecoin launchpads, stablecoin issuers, and trading apps. blocmates takes a different view. Revenue may support that framing, the article says, but outside speculation there are still viable on-chain products being built.
Its latest ecosystem stop is Base, the native network behind Base App. Even with the current debate over the gap between the network’s stated direction and what it is actually doing, the article describes Base as healthy on the numbers, with total value locked above $5 billion.
Base metrics point to scale, though TVL is concentrated
The article notes that the TVL picture is uneven. Morpho alone accounts for more than 80% of the network’s locked value, at more than $3 billion.
As of mid-August 2026, Base was handling about 12 million transactions a day, placing it among the highest-volume tracked chains. Daily active addresses stood at about 283,000. The network was also settling about 90% of x402 transactions, which the article describes as an emerging standard for micropayments between agents.
blocmates also says Base leads in on-chain spot trading volume for major L1 assets including BTC, ETH, and SOL. Over the past year, its share of global DEX volume rose from 8.8% to 12.1%, a 38% increase, while total trading volume climbed 38% year over year.
Against that backdrop, the article points to five products that it says deserve attention.
Hydrex: a MetaDEX built to aggregate Base liquidity
Hydrex is introduced first. It is described as a Base-native MetaDEX and automated market maker that combines native pools with external liquidity sources in the Base ecosystem, routing trades through venues such as Uniswap and Morpho to secure better pricing.
The project runs what the article calls a modified ve(3,3)-style incentive engine. Each week, community governance directs HYDX emissions and protocol revenue toward the liquidity and trading activity producing the highest output. Holders with locked tokens can capture 100% of the fees generated by Hydrex LPs through weekly allocations, along with partner incentives. In the article’s framing, that creates a tighter flywheel geared toward long-term alignment.
Hydrex also offers single-signature swaps and liquidity provision, an automated liquidity manager, and HYDX emissions backed by real reserve contributions, according to the piece.
SwapRoyale: fantasy competition wrapped around trading
SwapRoyale keeps trading at the center but changes the format. The article likens it to a DraftKings-style version of crypto trading and calls it one of the most interesting projects currently building on Base.
SwapRoyale is a fantasy trading competition app now in iOS public beta. Users pay a fixed entry fee, receive a $100,000 virtual portfolio, and join live trading contests.
The product flow, as outlined in the article, is straightforward. Users sign up with email. A wallet is created automatically. They can fund their account through Coinbase, Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay, a debit card, or any crypto wallet. Deposits and withdrawals carry zero platform fees. They can then review available competitions, including the asset set, prize pool, payout structure, duration, maximum number of trades, and minimum player count.
There are three contest formats:
- Guaranteed prize pools, or GPPs, aimed at higher volatility and bigger payouts
- Double-up or triple-up contests with lower volatility and steadier play
- Free contests for risk-free practice
The article says SwapRoyale now averages more than 300 daily players, has paid out more than $100,000 in prizes, and has more than 1,500 paying players.
It also says more integrations are being added across rewards, engagement, and ease of use. Those include a 76-badge system with interactive 3D collectibles, a revised streak mechanic, and richer sharing features; a weekly Megapot raffle with free ticket earning, live prize-pool tracking, and prizes backed by real tickets; and partner rewards redeemable through Trove, Moonshot, and Beezie.
Other product updates listed in the article include Blink instant funding, a more polished first-run experience, and a broad UX overhaul covering a new navigation system, a unified leaderboard, smoother gestures, haptics, sound design, animation, and a redesigned sharing flow.
BlockRun: an AI gateway with x402-native payments
For blocmates, the on-chain agent economy on Base is more than a slogan. The article says some of the most innovative work in on-chain AI has launched first on Base, with x402 singled out as one of the key building blocks.
BlockRun fits into that stack as a routing and payments layer. It is described as a permissionless AI gateway that lets autonomous systems discover, pay for, and execute services without API keys, subscriptions, or credit cards.
Through BlockRun, an agent can fund a non-custodial wallet with USDC on Base, call any endpoint, and have payment embedded directly into the HTTP request through the x402 protocol. Settlement happens in a single round trip.
The article’s pitch is simple: users pay only for the intelligence they actually use. Payments settle instantly in USDC, and agents can operate at internet speed without the friction of traditional API billing models.
PixieChess: chess with collectible NFT pieces and ETH prizes
PixieChess is the fourth project in the list. The article describes it as a “fantastical real-money chess” game on Base, where every piece is a collectible NFT with a unique ability that can alter standard chess rules.
Players assemble their board using their own collection, then either climb the ladder or burn pieces to enter higher-stakes matches and tournaments.
The value loop is central to the design, according to the article. Every sale funds the treasury, the treasury funds prizes, and winners take home real ETH.
The game still starts from classical chess. White moves first, players alternate turns, and one piece moves per turn. Castling, en passant, and pawn promotion follow standard rules unless a piece’s special ability overrides them.
The win condition is still checkmate. Draws can come from stalemate, mutual agreement, the 50-move rule with no capture or pawn move, threefold repetition, or insufficient material. Each player also has a clock that runs only on their own turn. Running out of time normally means a loss, unless the opponent lacks sufficient material to force mate, in which case the result is a draw.
The author says they are not a chess player, but still sees the game as compelling and potentially capable of reaching beyond the CT echo chamber.
Tokensto: selling unused AI tokens for cash
Tokensto targets another AI-related pain point. The article says many users end up with unused tokens after paying for AI subscriptions, while others build up a large balance only to see a competing service launch with a much better value proposition.
Tokensto’s answer is to turn those idle AI tokens into cash. The product is described as simple and easy to understand, and it is built on Base.
Users paste in a provider key, whether from OpenRouter, Venice, or any OpenAI-compatible URL. The listing then goes live, and if the price is competitive enough, it gets bought. Proceeds are sent directly to the user’s wallet.
On the backend, the article says the system is powered by Surplus, an open inference marketplace. Usdctofiat automatically prices each listing at the top of the order book, and users can cash out directly into off-chain banking apps through Peer, which is described as a permissionless on- and off-ramp protocol.
The article says early data suggests users are responding positively, and argues that breakout growth may only be a matter of time.
What the Base tour suggests
Across the five examples, blocmates sees a wider surface area for on-chain activity than the current consensus allows for: a MetaDEX designed around tighter incentive alignment, a skill-based fantasy trading app, an agent payment layer that strips out conventional API billing friction, a chess game that rewrites rules through collectible pieces while keeping value circulating inside its own system, and a marketplace that converts unused AI tokens into cash.
The article stops short of saying all of these experiments will become category-defining successes. What it does say is that builders on Base are still exploring consumer experience, agent infrastructure, and new game mechanics rather than chasing only the next speculative flywheel.
That, in its view, is the real takeaway. The range of interesting things happening on-chain remains broader than the market’s narrow consensus suggests.