Uniswap dominates deposits of Coinbase-issued stock tokens on Base

DeFi venues on Base currently hold $960,300 worth of Coinbase-issued stock tokens. Uniswap accounts for $943,200 of that figure, commanding roughly 98.2% of all deposits.

What Coinbase built and who showed up

Coinbase launched its B20-standard tokenized US stocks on the Base network, enabling fractional ownership of shares in companies like Apple (AAPLc), Nvidia (NVDAc), Meta (METAc), and Alphabet (GOOGLc). The tokens are available to eligible non-US users and can be traded around the clock, untethered from the opening and closing bells of traditional stock exchanges.

Each token is backed 1:1 by real underlying shares held by broker-custodian Alpaca within a bankruptcy-remote structure regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market.

The B20 token standard itself is a Base-native extension of the widely used ERC-20 standard, with added functionality for onchain management of corporate actions like dividends and stock splits.

At launch, DeFi integrations included liquidity on both Aerodrome and Uniswap, along with lending on Aave, Morpho, and Euler. Day-one metrics were respectable: approximately $4.5M minted, $3M in DEX liquidity, and 24-hour trading volume of $10.8M.

Why Uniswap ate everyone else’s lunch

The current deposit numbers paint a lopsided picture. Of the roughly $960,300 sitting across DeFi venues on Base, Uniswap holds $943,200. That leaves just $17,100 spread across every other protocol combined.

Aerodrome, despite being one of the named launch partners, appears to have captured only a sliver of deposits so far. The lending protocols, Aave, Morpho, and Euler, serve a different function entirely, facilitating borrowing and collateralization rather than spot trading liquidity.

The bigger picture for tokenized equities

What makes Coinbase’s approach different is the regulatory and custodial scaffolding. The 1:1 backing by real shares, the bankruptcy-remote holding structure, and regulation through the Abu Dhabi Global Market all signal an effort to build something that institutional and retail users outside the US can take seriously.

The restriction to non-US users is notable but expected. US securities law makes offering tokenized stocks to American investors a regulatory minefield that even Coinbase, with its extensive legal infrastructure, isn’t willing to navigate yet.

What to watch from here

The $960,300 in total DeFi deposits is modest by any standard, especially compared to the $4.5M minted at launch and the $10.8M in first-day trading volume. That gap suggests a significant portion of minted tokens are sitting in wallets rather than being deployed into DeFi protocols.

Aerodrome, as Base’s native DEX with its gauge-based emissions system, has the tools to redirect liquidity incentives toward stock token pools.

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