Shalini Nagarajan

Base, an Ethereum rollup utilizing Optimism&#8217;s OP stack, has launched a security enhancement system playfully dubbed &#8220;Pessimism.&#8221;



Pessimism serves as a monitoring system intended to bolster the security of the entire OP Stack, a collection of software that drives Optimism mainnet and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchains.



In a <a href="https://base.mirror.xyz/qQAChAdkfZDG_8Ik7FgrMIpjE-si3TdF1E5W6c8ruFQ">blog</a> on Wednesday, Base revealed that the Coinbase team has been actively running Pessimism in-house to supervise and monitor the Base mainnet since its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">launch</a> on Aug. 9.



The team is now making Pessimism open source, releasing it under an <a href="https://opensource.org/license/mit/">MIT license</a>, which offers the software freely and without restrictions.



Pessimism is designed to pinpoint protocol vulnerabilities that are distinct to the OP Stack, including withdrawal enforcement, fault detection and general events within the EVM blockchain.



“This lets us detect unauthorized or malicious events on the Base native bridge as well as the layer-1 / layer-2 system contracts on Base,” Base said.



At present, Pessimism offers support for overseeing user withdrawal security, identifying possible faults, upholding balance limits for accounts and detecting events within smart contracts.



Optimism-based rollups <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">do not yet have working fraud proofs</a>, so careful monitoring can help mitigate some of the risks.



“When an abnormal activity or event perceived as a security threat is detected, Pessimism alerts the team to swiftly address any potential risks,” the blog said.



Base plans to consistently roll out additional features for Pessimism to ensure coverage of potential protocol threats.



In just under two months since its launch, Base has surpassed Solana to claim the ninth spot as the largest blockchain in terms of total value locked.



Base is the third-largest network when it comes to the total value of assets it handles, among Ethereum-based protocols, ranking right after <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">Optimism</a>, according to <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">L2Beat</a>.



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Coinbase pushes ‘Pessimism’ to boost Base security

Katherine Ross

Coinbase’s layer-2 network, Base, suffered a block production stall on Tuesday.&nbsp;



According to a status <a href="https://status.base.org/">page</a>, the Base team said it identified the issue and had “deployed a fix.”



“We have deployed a fix and are starting to see recovery of block production and gossip,” the team wrote roughly 30 minutes after it announced the investigation.



&#8220;We identified a delay in block production due to part of our internal infrastructure requiring a refresh. We’ve implemented a fix and are seeing widespread recovery,” a Coinbase spokesperson told Blockworks via email.



In a previous post, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a> team wrote that it was “investigating a stall in production of blocks.”



“Users may have issues submitting transactions. We are actively investigating and will provide updates as we have them,” the team said earlier Tuesday in a <a href="https://status.base.org/incidents/n3q0q4z24b7h">post</a> on the network’s status page.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-next-internet-jesse-pollak">Base protocol is spearheading ‘the next generation of the internet’: Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak</a>



The problem stemmed from a stalled production of blocks, which therefore caused transaction submission issues. According to the incident report, Base’s mainnet is impacted which led to the lack of block production.



Users on X, formerly Twitter, were quick to notice the issue and flag it.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Wait is Base down? No blocks in 8 mins? <a href="https://t.co/tk5jOLZbI0">pic.twitter.com/tk5jOLZbI0</a>&mdash; rpc mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xMert_/status/1699175383885651980?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2">layer-2</a> network, built on Optimism’s OP stack, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">went live in early August</a> after Coinbase announced its plans to build it earlier this year.&nbsp;



On launch day, the total bridge value exceeded $150 million.



In the weeks following the announcement, Base <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-dapp-layer-2">announced over 140 integrations</a>.



Blockworks previously reported that Base has been “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-success-rea">unusually successful</a>” in attracting  volume from both cross-chain transactions and DeFi activity. 



Updated Sept. 5, 2023 at 10:10 pm ET: Added statement from Coinbase.



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Coinbase L2 Base suffers block production stall, team says fix deployed

Sebastian Sinclair

Less than a month after its launch, Web3 social app Friend.Tech has stumbled.



Activity on the network, whose dapp allows users to speculate on and gain access to individuals and their personal brands, topped out at around 38,000 transactions last week.



That figure has since fallen 96% to just 1,663 as of 5:00 am ET, according to a <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/friendtech">Dune Analytics</a> dashboard. At the same time, protocol inflow to the app has also dropped more than 90%, from $1.9 million witnessed on August 20 to $89,000.



Built on Coinbase incubated <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">optimistic rollup</a>, Base, Friend.Tech tokenizes users’ social profiles, creating a gated chat room accessible through “keys” (initially known as “shares”) and allowing holders to engage with influencers and creators.



After signup each linked X account, formerly Twitter, gets keys purchasable on a bonding curve, so early holders gain entry to a particular chat space cheaply, while subsequent keys are progressively more expensive. Each time a profile’s keys are purchased, that user receives a fee.



The communication flow is asymmetric, meaning users can directly message an influencer, but their responses are broadcast to all keyholders.



The app’s potential over the last three weeks has attracted a range of industry participants, including traders and social media personalities. Some experts said the app <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friend-tech-financialization-goldentre">could potentially provide a trading edge</a> by gaining knowledge within private chat rooms to accrue alpha, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friend-tech-bullish-bearish">while others have remained skeptical</a>.



Despite <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friendtech-social-token">initial interest following its launch</a> on August 10, on-chain activity shows almost all traders have <a href="https://dune.com/queries/2845442/4754698">sold more shares than they have bought</a>, indicating a preference for liquidating positions, data shows.



The drop in activity calls into question the longevity of the platform and its ability to generate revenue. Friend.Tech, which was once pulling in $1.68 million in fees per day, has seen revenue fall to a little over $161,000, on-chain data from <a href="https://defillama.com/fees/friend.tech">DeFi Llama</a> shows.



That decline in fees translates into a roughly 99% hit to daily revenue, from around $840,000 to just over $80,000, data shows.



A peak of active buyers, which topped out at 3,315 compared to 1,423 active sellers, on August 21, has also dropped to just 361 and 262, respectively. USD volume of keys bought, meanwhile, has sunk to $38,000 per day, from an initial peak of $1 million.



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Friend.Tech momentum stalls

James Cirrone

Coinbase’s layer-2 network, Base, was introduced on the Ethereum mainnet about two weeks ago. Since that time, decentralized apps have shown an eager interest in deploying their offerings on the network.&nbsp;



This rapid uptake might be attributed to Base&#8217;s immediate success; on the day of its launch, the network reported <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-success-rea">over $150 million in total value bridged</a> (TVB).&nbsp;



That figure has since ballooned to more than $261 million, per a Dune Analytics <a href="https://dune.com/tk-research/base">dashboard</a>. This far surpasses the TVB of <a href="https://dune.com/tk-research/mantle">Mantle</a> and <a href="https://dune.com/angry/linea-mainnet-dashboard">Linea</a>, layer-2s that launched within weeks of Base.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">More than 100 dapps were integrated with Base at launch</a> in an attempt to take advantage of the early hype.&nbsp;



Chainlink, for example, was brought on as a partner to provide price feeds for the new layer-2. Additionally, about a dozen wallets have integrated, including Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow Wallet, Trust Wallet and Safe.&nbsp;



Here are some other notable participants in the Base network.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1inch</h2>



The most recent entrant was 1inch, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, which deployed on Base Thursday at 10 am ET.&nbsp;



Specifically, the 1inch Aggregation Protocol and the 1inch Limit Order Protocol are now available on Base, according to the company’s <a href="https://twitter.com/1inch/status/1694711772895441366">thread</a> on X.&nbsp;



Uniswap v3, Balancer v2, and SushiSwap v3 are just some of the dozen plus protocols that users will have access to on Base through 1inch.&nbsp;



“Base is a very promising layer-2 solution, plus it’s incubated by such a major player,” 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz said in a statement shared with Blockworks. 



The company noted that an added benefit of the integration was that 1inch could now be in a position to benefit from “Coinbase product integrations and easy fiat onramps.”



Separately, Matcha is another DEX aggregator that <a href="https://blog.matcha.xyz/article/trade-tokens-on-base-with-matcha">recently launched</a> on Base.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Friend.tech</h2>



This decentralized platform that has friends frantically buying and selling “keys,” previously described as “shares,” of one another&#8217;s social media pages is another dapp that’s native to Base.&nbsp;



Friend.tech, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friendtech-social-token">has garnered 100,000 users as of last count</a>, launched on Base on Aug. 10.&nbsp;



The platform, described as an on-chain social app, saw its revenue peak at over $840,000 on Aug. 20.&nbsp;



In the last few days, the amount it has collected through fees has steadily declined to where on Aug. 22, just two days after reaching an all time high, revenue dipped to just over $161,000, according to <a href="https://defillama.com/fees/friend.tech">DeFiLlama</a>.



But for people using Friend.tech, accountants have told Blockworks that by trading “keys,” <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/friend-tech-taxes">taxable events are created</a>.



They added that anyone trading on Friend.tech should keep records of their transactions close, and report them at the end of the tax year.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Arkham Intelligence</h2>



Arkham Intelligence <a href="https://twitter.com/ArkhamIntel/status/1693978849976226223">announced</a> Tuesday that a core group of its services is now supported on Base.&nbsp;



Arkham users can now see “a complete token portfolio of your wallets on Base,” and “visualize transactions on Base from any cluster of accounts.”



The company’s pitch also mentioned that users can now track influencers on Friend.tech through its native platform.&nbsp;



Arkham got loads of media attention in early July for its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arkham-on-chain-intelligence-platform">bounty-based marketplace for on-chain intelligence</a>. The marketplace certainly received praise, but the criticism ended up being much louder and more prominent.&nbsp;



Many people circulated concerns about “on-chain doxxing,” since sleuths are paid for, among other things, exposing info about particular wallet addresses.



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Base boasts around 140 integrations two weeks after launch

Darren Kleine

Way back in 2016, Jesse Pollak explains, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong wrote his vision for the company in a not-so-secret master plan.



The Coinbase protocols lead summarizes the <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/the-coinbase-secret-master-plan">plan</a>: Build the protocols, then the infrastructure, and finally the consumer interfaces. “Then we&#8217;re going to have millions of dapps [decentralized applications] that billions of people use in the crypto economy.”&nbsp;



Speaking to Chase Chapman on the On the Other Side podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/57JOGg44f2dESwdMvoywU6?si=YcTAZA2PSlO0QwuZLfg5RA">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/85-bringing-a-billion-users-onchain-w-jesse-pollak/id1570685120?i=1000625377852">Apple</a>), Pollak says the company has a long way to go to reach the lofty goal. “We&#8217;ve been a little stalled out, right?”



“Since <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a>, we&#8217;re 14 years in and we don&#8217;t have millions of dapps that billions of people use. We don&#8217;t have tens of dapps that millions of people use,” he laughs.&nbsp;



Pollak believes that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-success-rea">bringing Coinbase on-chain</a> is integral to its mandate. “If we weren&#8217;t trying to figure out how to bring Coinbase on-chain and trying to figure out how to pioneer that for ourselves so other people can help follow, then we wouldn&#8217;t be working on our mission.”



“There&#8217;s a great business in the current land,” he says, “but I think we want to do more than build a great business. We want to change the world.”



Noting the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">recent launch of the layer-2 Base protocol</a>, Pollak explains that the “next generation of the internet” is on-chain, adding the innovation will “increase economic freedom globally.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The innovator’s dilemma</h2>



The concept reminds podcast host Chase Chapman of the “innovator’s dilemma” —&nbsp; building a new product that entices consumers away from an already successful product — “how do you put yourself ‘out of business,’ in a way?”



Building on-chain demands a challenging shift in mentality, Pollak says. “Embracing the new ways of working, the new ways that information flows and value flows and data flows. It&#8217;s a massive, massive paradigm shift in the same way that the internet was a massive paradigm shift.”



“There&#8217;s a lot of inertia that pulls, to stay in the legacy world,” he says. “Even at the most crypto-forward public company in the world, which I think Coinbase is.”



Pollak is curious to see how this movement will translate to other companies navigating the space, “either being able to make that jump and cross that chasm and overcome the innovator&#8217;s dilemma — or getting stuck.”&nbsp;



“I don&#8217;t know exactly how that&#8217;s gonna play out, but it&#8217;s not gonna be a walk in the park for anyone.”



Pollak expects the massive change in technology infrastructure, culture and product strategy will require “a lot of introspection at large organizations” who will need to figure out how to be successful in the “next generation of the internet.”



<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=BWG9619135973" width="100%"></iframe>







Part of the problem is that corporations are “top-down” in nature, Pollak says. “It flows from the leader of that organization and then flows through the leadership team. There&#8217;s all these things that are done to inculcate the culture and align people to it.”



But Pollak says that a decentralized blockchain culture builds from the bottom-up. “You want people to feel like they can create culture independently,” he says. “They can create their own microcosms of what&#8217;s going on and who they want to be interacting with.”



The trick is to find a balance, Pollak explains. “How do you come from that place of a more top-down corporate culture, and then how do you seed and create space for this more bottom-up, decentralized culture? I don&#8217;t think we have a perfect answer.”



“Base has been live for 10 days,” Polak says, “but in those 10 days, it&#8217;s happening. There&#8217;s the people. They&#8217;re popping up. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inside-coinbase-base-launch">They&#8217;re creating Twitter accounts and memes</a> and they&#8217;re building cool little projects and they&#8217;re dropping them.”



“That&#8217;s been so inspiring and so heartwarming for me to see and experience. Two years of working on something and then feeling like — whoa — now, it&#8217;s a little out of my hands.”



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Base protocol is spearheading ‘the next generation of the internet’: Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak

Bessie Liu

Friend.tech has drawn the interest of over 100,000 users in less than a month of launching.



Users, who all seem to have something to say about it, are now parsing the possibilities of the fast-growing on-chain social app, which sells “shares” of social media profiles and employs social tokens.



In a sign of its popularity, the new on-chain social app has banked $1.42 million in fees in the past 24 hours, according to <a href="https://defillama.com/fees">DeFiLama</a>. This figure makes it the third-most profitable crypto platform, behind the liquid staking protocol Lido and the Ethereum blockchain itself.



Friend.tech launched on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">Base</a>, Coinbase’s layer-2 network, on Aug. 10. So far, Friend.tech has seen over <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/friendtech">1.3 million transactions</a>, earning over <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/friendtech">$2 billion </a>in revenue derived from fees.



More broadly, the platform builds on the concept of so-called social tokens.&nbsp;



Token-powered social media apps have existed for some time, with such tokens providing some kind of incentive or benefit to the holder, as is the case with fan tokens. Some of those platforms have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/rally-leaves-social-token-nfts-in-limbo-after-abrupt-exit">struggled alongside other token projects</a>, however.&nbsp;



Friend.tech, however, stands out for its viral moment this weekend and the apparent speed at which it has attracted activity.&nbsp;



When a Friend.tech user signs up, they grant consent to the app to create shares on a <a href="https://basescan.org/address/0xcf205808ed36593aa40a44f10c7f7c2f67d4a4d4#code">smart contract</a> that is tied to their account on X, formerly known as Twitter. The project, according to its website, does not yet have a privacy policy.&nbsp;



Other users can purchase shares (or social tokens) of user profiles, enabling them to join group chats and message that particular user. Every time a person’s share is purchased, that user will receive a “subject fee.”



The product also enables participants to spot up-and-coming users by listing trending trades and sharing an activity feed for shares owned within a given network.&nbsp;



Currently, users can only sign up to Friend.tech with a referral code. Crypto influencers on X have jumped at the opportunity to share personal referral codes to earn “points,” which bring about airdrops every Friday.&nbsp;



As of Aug. 21, there were over 80,000 unique <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/friendtech">buyers</a> on Friend.tech, and over 30,000 unique <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/friendtech">sellers</a>, according to Dune Analytics data.&nbsp;



However, it is unclear how many of those users are trading bots.&nbsp;



Jim Chang, the co-founder of Catalyst AMM, said in a post on X that MEV bots began speculating on his shares immediately after joining the app.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Okay no one told me that within seconds of joining <a href="https://twitter.com/friendtech?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@friendtech</a> that MEV bots would speculate on my shares lmao <a href="https://t.co/G0OVXNZKyx">pic.twitter.com/G0OVXNZKyx</a>&mdash; Jim (@0xJim) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xJim/status/1693570464759910872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“It gives me dopamine immediately upon joining, which is what all social networks strive to do,” Chang told Blockworks. “I don’t know if the Friend.tech team did that on purpose, but it’s a great byproduct of being on-chain.”



Wrapped versions of Friend.tech shares are also available as ERC-20 tokens on Base — and users can track the <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/friend-tech">value</a> of their favorite crypto influencers.



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Decentralized social media app Friend.tech is surging

Andrew Thurman

The launch of Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network, has been unusually successful, attracting significant volume in terms of both DeFi activity and cross-chain bridge transactions.&nbsp;



But the burst of activity begs the question: How much of the strong start is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/airdrop-farming-ethereum-layer-2-activity">attributable to Sybil attackers and airdrop farmers</a>?&nbsp;



Base <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-l2-base-mainnet">launched yesterday</a>. However, due to traders discovering what was at the time a one-way bridge, the network managed to attract significant volume prior to the official ribbon-cutting.&nbsp;



In an interview with Blockworks, Nansen analyst Sandra Leow compared the launch favorably to Mantle and Linea, two other layer-2s that went live in the past month.&nbsp;



Per a Dune Analytics <a href="https://dune.com/tk-research/base">dashboard</a>, the total value bridged to Base exceeded $150 million on the day of the official launch, and sits at $162 million as of today — exceeding Mantle’s <a href="https://dune.com/tk-research/mantle">$67 million</a> and Linea’s <a href="https://dune.com/angry/linea-mainnet-dashboard">$47 million</a>.



“It seems like the Base ecosystem is far ahead compared to the other new [layer-2s],” Leow concluded.&nbsp;



Part of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a>’s early dominance can be attributed to the raucous soft launch. Over the course of a busy July 29 weekend for altcoin traders, new DEXes on the chain ran up $200 million in volume on a 24-hour basis and a memecoin inspired by Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong — BALD — ran up a $100 million market capitalization <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inside-coinbase-base-launch">before the token creator pulled liquidity</a>.&nbsp;



In a written interview with Blockworks, a Coinbase spokesperson repeatedly emphasized the network’s “open and permissionless system” and noted that the chain launched with over 100 protocol partners. Per DefiLlama, over 20 <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Base">protocols</a> have $100,000 or more in total value locked (TVL).&nbsp;



Nansen’s Leow says the variety has offered traders alternatives following the collapse of BALD.&nbsp;



“So far, it does seem like this playbook is working, as even post-BALD rug and you would expect users to have lost confidence in the Base chain, it seems like the chain has gone past the Bald frenzy and [traders] are actually using other apps on the chain,” Leow said.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Airdrop farmers?&nbsp;</h2>



Yesterday, the Ethereum base chain had just under 430,000 active addresses. By comparison, Base had 100,000 active addresses.&nbsp;



On its face, it’s unlikely that Base has already managed to capture a quarter of the active addresses on Ethereum. What’s more, the number of active addresses isn’t the same as the number of active users. This raises the possibility that a portion of those addresses are managed by Sybil users.&nbsp;



Sybil attackers — and/or airdrop farmers — are users who deploy multiple blockchain addresses and perform actions on a chain that has yet to release governance tokens. Often new chains will use tokens to reward early addresses that complete certain actions, such as bridging a certain amount or using a DeFi protocol. By utilizing multiple addresses, a single user can trick a platform into giving them additional tokens by appearing to be multiple independent users.&nbsp;



According to pseudonymous airdrop farmer <a href="https://twitter.com/CC2Ventures">CC2 Ventures</a>, large-scale operations can involve dozens of investors pooling hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for gas fees, labor and software to deploy thousands of addresses in an effort to reap airdrop rewards.&nbsp;



Notably, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> has publicly denied plans for an airdrop, and the chain uses ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) as the gas fee token. However, CC2 implied this might not stop many Sybil attackers.



“Coinbase denying an airdrop will dissuade some farmers, but most simply won&#8217;t care. In fact, it might even have a reverse effect as projects like Arbitrum, Paraswap and even Sui to an extent constantly denied all airdrop rumors, yet still followed through with it,” they wrote.&nbsp;



These operations often use sophisticated methods to obfuscate the fact that multiple addresses are controlled by the same party. Because of that, it’s nearly impossible to calculate exactly how much Base activity is attributable to farmers.&nbsp;



However, both CC2 and Leow told Blockworks that a significant portion of the traffic and TVL is organic. CC2 added that the chain’s early reputation for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/meme-coins">memecoin</a> mania could lead to it becoming a hub of&nbsp; activity for casual traders.&nbsp;



“I can see it becoming a retail favorite due to having similar dynamics as Binance Smart Chain (reputable, &#8216;normie&#8217; friendly company) with even lower fees,” they wrote.



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Early activity on Coinbase’s Base chain shows promising signs

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



Coinbase first <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-launches-l2">revealed its intention to build Base</a> in February, when CEO Brian Armstrong detailed what he was calling “The Coinbase Secret Master Plan.”



The launch of Base&#8217;s mainnet marks an important milestone of this plan, <a href="https://blockworks.co/speaker/jesse-pollak">Jesse Pollak</a>, head of protocols at Coinbase, told Blockworks.



Developers have had access to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a> 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 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-home-degens">also moved</a> to make themselves at home on Base once the doors were ostensibly opened.&nbsp;



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.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What’s next for Base?</h2>



Base’s developers are working with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">Optimism</a> and actively looking into ways to continue decentralizing.&nbsp;



A Leader Election <a href="https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/ecosystem-contributions/issues/63">proposal</a> is currently in the works, which Pollak describes as a first milestone to decentralized sequencing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The team is also in touch with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/shared-sequencer-tech-goes-live">Espresso Systems</a>, who has recently revealed a testnet version of the Espresso Sequencer.&nbsp;



“I think it&#8217;s a great illustration of the approach we&#8217;re taking with the OP stack and Base,” Pollak said. “Rather than trying to do it all ourselves, we&#8217;re leveraging the magic of decentralization and saying: Hey, we have this open-source technology stack, it&#8217;s customizable, it&#8217;s modular, it&#8217;s built to be pluggable.”



The Base and Optimism teams are also working with other ecosystem contributors to explore zkEVM <a href="https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/ecosystem-contributions/issues/61">technology</a> and how it could be incorporated into the OP stack.&nbsp;



“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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Coinbase layer-2 network Base now live on Ethereum mainnet

It’s still not easy enough for Mom and Pop to go “on-chain,” Santiago Santos says.&nbsp;



While Mom and Pop probably won’t be hopping on-chain any time soon, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> protocols lead Jesse Pollak agrees with the sentiment. “Historically, it&#8217;s been a pretty complicated process.”



If someone wants to use an on-chain application, Pollak says, it requires several steps, from getting a wallet to funding it and moving Ethereum to the right place.“ That whole process can take minutes. It can take hours if you&#8217;re relatively unsophisticated.”



On the Empire podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7EUjxkttEQrLEOetAIsGw0?si=IzK4bRH_QMWP64PEQNizmA&amp;nd=1">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/base-decentralization-funding-public-infrastructure/id1554930038?i=1000623911753">Apple</a>), Pollak talks to host Santiago about making things easier for the next generation of crypto users. Building <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2</a> rollup <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inside-coinbase-base-launch">Base</a>, Pollak says the company is thinking about “how to get that next wave of adoption.”



“Our goal has been to make it so anyone can go from zero to doing something meaningful in less than 60 seconds on-chain,” he says.



“That&#8217;s going from having no wallet and scanning a QR code to having a funded wallet that can transact to buy your favorite on-chain song or sign up for an on-chain restaurant pass or participate in an on-chain community.”



Pollak admits there’s a “ton more work” to do to make the Base experience smoother, but that taking away complexity is the “north star” that the team is following, making the onboarding process “dead simple so that billions of people can actually come on-chain.”



Pollak foresees the flow of consumer usage to be a mix of both “managed experiences that are incredibly simple” and more diverse browser-based experiences that “bring in the entire ecosystem.”



“It&#8217;s not really possible to just curate and create first-party experiences for every product,” Pollak says.&nbsp;



“Historically, Coinbase has really focused on building first party experiences,” he says, “but as we looked at what was required to bring the next billion people on-chain, what we saw was, that&#8217;s going to require millions of apps.”



“It&#8217;s going to require tons of things that maybe we can&#8217;t even predict.” For a vibrant and diverse ecosystem to thrive, Pollak says the team needs to focus on “empowering developers and letting everyday people use these incredible products that are starting to be built on-chain.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Enabling a ‘thousand flowers to bloom’</h2>



Pollak says the team believes in an open and permissionless approach to development on Base. “It should be a place where there&#8217;s no single party that&#8217;s curating or controlling or dictating what can and can&#8217;t be done.”



“Base is open and permissionless. People will be able to put anything on there,” enabling “a thousand flowers to bloom,” he says.



“Maybe 900 of those flowers are incredible, but 100 of them aren&#8217;t so great.” The role of Coinbase and those who are building interfaces on top of Base, he says, should be to help build tools and services “that allow folks to distinguish which of those flowers do we wanna smell versus not.”



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Pollak says Coinbase has already been building with this in mind. “If you go to [any] Coinbase product, you&#8217;ll see [decentralized applications], you&#8217;ll see ratings and reviews. You’ll see warnings if you try to interact with something that&#8217;s high risk.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-base-home-degens">The ‘crypto degen crowd’ has settled in on Coinbase layer-2, Base</a>



“That balance is really how we think about it,” he says. “Base aims to be open and permissionless, because that&#8217;s what enables the global on-chain economy.”&nbsp;



Coinbase, he says, is more “curatorial” and focused on “providing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unbanked-crypto-trust-banking">a trusted experience</a> and ensuring that the products and apps that we show to our customers are really ones that they know they can interact with, with confidence.”



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Coinbase aims to make it easier for ‘mom and pop’ to go on-chain

It looks like the crypto degen crowd has found a new home: Base, Coinbase’s brand-new layer-2 network.&nbsp;



Since bridging over to the new Optimism-based offering <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/inside-coinbase-base-launch">was made available</a>, total value bridged to the rollup now exceeds $124 million, according to <a href="https://dune.com/tk-research/base">Dune</a> analytics.&nbsp;



And a lot of that volume, according to Mike Ippolito, appears to be coming from “degen crypto power users.”



“There were a couple of Base <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/dex">DEXs</a> that popped up very quickly,” Ippolito says on the Bell Curve podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7pfcijhPoPDgW4urlyETFg?si=bW6StGEuT8ehOAlL3GgxJA">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/curves-%2470m-hack-base-launch-exceeds-%24230m-24hr-trading/id1641356619?i=1000623435515">Apple</a>), with $230 million in 24-hour volume and 700,000 trades immediately following launch. “And there was of course, in true crypto fashion, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/memecoin">memecoin</a>.”



The developer of BALD, Ippolito explains, provided liquidity as the memecoin soared in value but soon “rugged” it, making off with a <a href="https://twitter.com/thiccythot_/status/1686024695865360384?s=20">fortune</a> while driving the coin’s value back to zero.&nbsp;



“I&#8217;m not ultra surprised about how any of this has played out,” he says.



According to <a href="https://twitter.com/WestieCapital/status/1686417439372812288?s=20">Blockworks Research</a>, Base accrued over $700,000 in profit in just the first few days of activity.&nbsp;



Although it would be overly optimistic to extrapolate the profits of a frenzied first few days out to an annual basis, “it still gives you a sense of what this could be nonetheless, if it really blows up,” Ippolito says.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Laying out a blueprint</h2>



Myles O’Neil, associate at the advisory and investment firm Reverie, says companies like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> are “laying out this blueprint for how enterprises can finally build enterprise blockchains without having to say, this is a private blockchain and a walled garden.”



But with the activity that’s taken place on Base in its early days, O’Neil observes, “we&#8217;re starting to see what works and what doesn&#8217;t work with this plan.”



Rather than heavily curating development on the rollup, O’Neil says Coinbase likely did not want Base to be seen as “opinionated,” creating a “private blockchain” experience. Other enterprises, he says, might be watching the phenomenon and saying, “Maybe we should be a little bit more opinionated, or at least have some sort of standard for deploying that you have to meet in order to deploy on our rollup.”



“And how do we strike that balance when it&#8217;s such a competitive space?”



Rollups are furiously competing to attract apps to their chains, O’Neil says. “Some apps would love to associate their brand with Base, but does Base really want to associate their brand with them?”



The speculative explosion of activity associated with the BALD memecoin and its subsequent “rug-pull” is not good for Base, O’Neil says. “More of the same here is not necessarily what we need,” he says.



“Something that is differentiated and really clean and gets through to a larger class of users is more of what we need.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">These are the users we have today</h2>



“I think it’s good,” Ippolito disagrees. “What would&#8217;ve kind of sucked is if they had made it this corporate KYC [know-your-customer] thing from day one. My soul would&#8217;ve been a little bit crushed.”



Allowing memecoins like BALD to thrive, albeit temporarily, shows that Coinbase can “let [their] hair down,” Ippolito jokes.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s all very well and good to say, ‘Hey, we&#8217;d like a more sophisticated class of users.’ Great. Who wouldn&#8217;t? But these are the users that we have today, right now.”



“As a crypto protocol right now, [you] have two choices,” Ippolito says. “You can build for your <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-traditional-finance-ignorance-learning">degen audience today</a> or you can build for no one.”



“There aren&#8217;t these ‘normie’ people out there that are watching Base saying, man, if only there wasn&#8217;t a meme coin here, I&#8217;d go in and I&#8217;d start [liquidity pooling] on this stuff.”



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Ippolito says “really great visionary product designers” are “meeting the market that exists today” while also threading into a longer term vision.



O’Neil wonders if a balance can be struck between a fully curated corporate deployment and the wide-open permissionless approach. “Trust plays an enormous role in all of this,” he says. “Coinbase has been really thoughtful about how to build trust with both the crypto native community as well as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-york-mining-moratorium-coinbase">the more traditional side</a>.”



“They&#8217;re threading that needle to be both what the market wants today as well as positioning itself to be the go-to provider for everybody tomorrow.”



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