Base’s native coin is USDC and in some ways the L2 is a vampire attack on $eth. 

Yes? No? Dumb?

icebreaker.xyz/0xen |
https://gallery.so/Oxen/galleries | https://opensea.io/collection/farcats

Idk about USDC native coin. Agree ETH isn’t needed for gas which affects value accrual but most apps and users still price assets in ETH terms

I can only think of NFTs as something that is strictly priced in ETH. Everything else was always in $ value, no?

I mainly write code and read books. Sometimes I take pictures. I wish I’d write.

https://zora.co/ruhum

I think people also trade tokens to stack the native token (i.e. SOL or ETH) - even if they think about their port holdings in USD terms, they "exit" to the native token as opposed to exiting to USDC

I don't think people are stacking ETH rn. Maybe their initial trade due to liquidity and swap fees but my guess is most current big sells in the ETH ecosystem eventually end up in USDC because of capital gains and ETH/BTC awfulness. Imagine selling 1m worth of $higher at 37% short term capital gains rate into $3800 ETH. That's 630k after taxes that's now 397k. Ouch!

sites like fees.wtf tell the story of $eth's runup last cycle. I personally spent 10s of thousands in trading fees and I was a small fish.  Whales spent hundreds of thousands, all buy pressure that's no longer there.