Coinbase layer-2 network Base now live on Ethereum mainnet

Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network built with Optimism’s OP stack, is officially opening its doors today.

Coinbase first revealed its intention to build Base in February, when CEO Brian Armstrong detailed what he was calling “The Coinbase Secret Master Plan.”

The launch of Base’s mainnet marks an important milestone of this plan, Jesse Pollak, head of protocols at Coinbase, told Blockworks.

Developers have had access to Base since July 13, and a number of users have already bridged their ETH to the layer-2 network through a portal proxy contract. Members of crypto’s “degen” community also moved to make themselves at home on Base once the doors were ostensibly opened. 

At launch, more than 100 decentralized apps (dapps) and service providers will operate on the network.

​​In the first week of what Base is calling “on-chain summer,” users can mint multiple NFT designs and artworks to celebrate the launch. A handful of ecosystems and dapps will also be publicly available for users, including prominent players such as Uniswap, Aave and Compound.

“We really see Base as the place to bring the next billion people on-chain,” Pollak said. “A lot of that is because of our ability to integrate that into those consumer experiences and make everything really easy to use.”

What’s next for Base?

Base’s developers are working with Optimism and actively looking into ways to continue decentralizing. 

A Leader Election proposal is currently in the works, which Pollak describes as a first milestone to decentralized sequencing.  

The team is also in touch with Espresso Systems, who has recently revealed a testnet version of the Espresso Sequencer. 

“I think it’s a great illustration of the approach we’re taking with the OP stack and Base,” Pollak said. “Rather than trying to do it all ourselves, we’re leveraging the magic of decentralization and saying: Hey, we have this open-source technology stack, it’s customizable, it’s modular, it’s built to be pluggable.”

The Base and Optimism teams are also working with other ecosystem contributors to explore zkEVM technology and how it could be incorporated into the OP stack. 

“I feel pretty blessed and lucky that we are in a position where there are all these incredible teams that are seeing the OP stack as a shelling point and are contributing to it in a really meaningful way,” Pollak said.

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