Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 6 more
BlockchainsBase
Leads190 ms
- p99
- 493 ms
- rank
- #2
- samples
- 431,988
Optimism
Trails1.96 s
- p99
- 2.98 s
- rank
- #5
- samples
- 43,198
Split decision: Base leads on Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 6 more (190 ms vs 1.96 s) and Fastest free public RPC for Ethereum, BNB, Polygon and 23 more chains (103 ms vs 151 ms); Optimism leads on Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains ($0.0000018 vs $0.000287) and Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency (18.8 min vs 19.0 min). Data as of 2026-11-08 UTC.
Coinbase-operated optimistic rollup on the OP Stack. 2-second sequencer block time, shared bridge with Optimism via the OP Superchain, fastest-growing L2 by TVL since 2024.
Optimistic rollup and the canonical OP Stack reference implementation. 2-second sequencer block time, 7-day fraud-proof window, anchored to Ethereum L1 via batch submissions to the Optimism Portal.
Base
Leads190 ms
Optimism
Trails1.96 s
Headline: All chains
Base
Leads103 ms
Optimism
Trails151 ms
Latency is conditional on success: the harness times only calls returning a valid fresh block, so a mostly-failing endpoint can post a fast p50. Rows below 50 percent success are degraded; unresponsive probes pin below the table. The All chains aggregate favours single-chain foundation endpoints (Base, Binance, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche officials) since they rank on one chain only; use a chain tab for honest comparison. Dead endpoints (cloudflare-eth POST returns -32603) are excluded.
Base
Trails$0.000287
Optimism
Leads$0.0000018
Headline: All chains
Base
Trails41
Optimism
No data in window
A zero row means no incident was caught in the window, not a proof of correctness. Most providers post zero most days; this bench exists for the days they do not, and for the errors: a blocked eth_getLogs or a balance read gated behind a paid key at 40 blocks of depth counts as an incident because it is one from the caller's seat.
Base
Trails19.0 min
Optimism
Leads18.8 min
Base
Trails22.5 min
Optimism
Leads18.3 min
Base
Leads12.87 s
Optimism
Trails2.0 min
Base
Trails25.4 min
Optimism
Leads25.0 min
| Provider | Bridged TVL | Bridged share | 7d change | 7d vs peers | Native | Canonical | External |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $7.76B | 54.7% | - | - | $6.42B | $2.74B | $5.02B |
| Optimism | $1.21B | 81.7% | - | - | $270.65M | $905.13M | $304.85M |
Bridged TVL is value secured by the chain's bridge, not value locked in its DeFi protocols; a chain can rank high on one and low on the other. The split is L2Beat's: canonical is escrowed on the host chain by the chain's own contracts, external came through a third-party bridge, native was minted here. Rows are the chains L2Beat tracks in its scaling summary; a settled L1 has no row by construction, not by omission. Size is not quality: a large balance says capital came, not that it stayed.
| Provider | 30d change | Stablecoin float | Net 7d | 7d change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | - | $5.01B | - | - |
| Optimism | - | $398.55M | - | - |
Stablecoin float is where dollars are parked, not what they do. A chain can take in a billion that sits idle, and lose float to a single issuer redeeming. The figure is DefiLlama's chain-wide pegged-USD aggregate, every issuer combined; it does not separate a bridge inflow from a native mint, and a dollar bridged to an L2 counts on both chains, so rows are not additive. Read the net dollars with the percentage beside them: the same $400M is a rounding error on Ethereum and a doubling elsewhere.
Base and Optimism are compared on 10 shared OpenChainBench benchmarks. Base leads on Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 6 more. Optimism leads on Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains. See the live table on this page for every metric.
On the Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 6 more benchmark, Base leads at 190 ms versus Optimism at 1.96 s. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.
On the Cheapest blockchain transaction fee, live across L1 and L2 chains benchmark, Optimism leads at $0.0000018 versus Base at $0.000287. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.
Every benchmark on this page uses the same open methodology, published at https://openchainbench.com/methodology. Data is CC-BY-4.0. Measurement harnesses are MIT-licensed.
Auto-generated pairs require: both providers in the same benchmark for seven consecutive days, at least 1000 samples per provider, observable third-party search demand, and a public /products/[slug] page on OCB. Editorially curated pairs (like this one) may publish early when search demand is high and data is accruing; panels with fewer than 100 samples are shown as provisional. The full pair ledger is versioned in the public repo.