What is Base Batches? 

Base Batches is a program designed to help the top Base builders launch and scale their startups. 

Base Batch 001 started as an extended hackathon with a virtual livestreamed demo day, with the breakout app Noice taking down the top prize. Batch 002 was split into two tracks. The Builder Track consisted of a hackathon for early stage builders with a virtual support program for the top 50 teams. The Startup Track was designed for more mature teams who were actively fundraising, and Base flew 50 teams from all over the world to a live demo day as part of Devconnect in Buenos Aires. This culminated in several success stories including Charms.ai, Glider, and our overall winner Upshot going on to complete successful raises and product launches. 

Like the startups in each cohort, Batches itself has evolved. Founders told us what they needed most: targeted support, and above all else, help raising. 

Therefore, Base Batch 003 features an accelerator program with dedicated mentorship, geared towards driving funding outcomes for participating teams via a Demo Day, with many teams ultimately receiving direct investments from the Base Ecosystem Fund.

The Base Batch 003 Selection Process 

When Base Batches opened applications in February, we were blown away that 1,175 teams applied. That is a 63% increase in applications from Base Batches 002, and the clearest signal yet that builders are choosing Base as the place to ship.

From those 1,175 teams, our team manually reviewed each application ultimately selecting ~120 teams who moved onto the interview stage based on a few core factors including: founder-market fit, Base-alignment, and traction. 

Each of these 120 teams were then scheduled for short 15-minute interviews with questions that assessed the teams on (among other things): 

• Clarity:  can the team clearly describe the problem their product solves? 

• Demonstrated mastery: what unique, proprietary insight(s) do they have for their market?

• Velocity: how frequently do they ship products and test growth strategies?

• Founder-Market Fit: what distinct backgrounds do the founders have that make them suited to win in their market? 

And finally, our team with direct input from the Base Ecosystem Fund selected the 12 teams that will be participating in the BB003 cohort. These teams are concentrated in the verticals that have established PMF in the industry: stablecoins, prediction markets, DeFi, and AI with a few teams building directly with the x402 protocol. 

The Base Batch 003 cohort directly aligns with Base’s updated Mission, Vision, Strategy for 2026 focusing on trading, payments, and ultimately teams building the apps and protocols that will grow the onchain economy and Base’s ecosystem. 

And for the teams that weren’t selected: accelerator selections are a puzzle of numbers, diversity of sectors, and stage-specific constraints. They are not a verdict on your potential. Some of the most resilient protocols in crypto were built in the "quiet" periods, away from the spotlights and the hype cycles. So make sure to register your app, adopt Builder Codes to track your growth, and keep shipping.

Meet the Cohort

Blockrun.ai: Infra for AI agents to access LLMs, tools and data - all paid per request via x402. Founder: Vicky Fu

(Stealth): a new leverage primitive for prediction markets. Founder: Joey Roth

4Mica: The clearing infrastructure for agentic microtransactions. Founders: Akash Madhusudan, Mairon Mahzoun

OPAL: Privacy Perp DEX - Trade Crypto & RWA’s with house-blind privacy. Founders:  Kenzan Boo , Clemens Walter

Onsight: the gamified social predictions platform. Founder: Tommy Ngo

Credifi: Uncollateralized lending via zktls + credit score. Founders: Motasem Ahmed + Aaron Ash

Tomorrow: Secured stablecoin lending for the creator economy. Founders: Abhi Raheja + Nitin Mittal

Agently: Routing layer where AI coordinates and transacts. Founders Luke Xie + Fuxing Loh + Jia Jian Goi

Nivo: Onchain FX Hedging Platform for SMEs. Founder:  Nicolas Arevalo

JPEG App: Opinion Markets on photo content where the highest bet wins. Founders: Danny Vayne + Keng Hin

Floe Labs: Credit for AI Agents and Institutions. Founder: Alex Christian

Liminal: Self-custodial AI-native neobank. Founders: Fifi Tsamados + Jack Marsh 

What's ahead

Base Batches 003 is a seven-week virtual program that runs from April 6th to May 19th, consisting of: 

• Weekly keynote sessions from top founders 

• Dedicated mentorship with experts from both within Coinbase and externally 

• Perks program from our partners including Venice, AWS, FailSafe, Alchemy, Coinbase Developer Platform and Coinbase Business

• Product design roast sessions by Airfoil

• Weekly open office hours held by key Base leaders from across our engineering, product, GTM, and ecosystem fund 

• Demo Day practice sessions and roasts

And the program concludes with a live Demo Day in SF on May 19th where each team will have two minutes to present their company to an audience of investors as they look to close their round and scale their business.  

Twelve teams are about to spend seven weeks shipping harder than they have before. And by May 19, they will have advisors in their corner, a network of Base founders behind them, and a Demo Day stage in front of them.

We can’t wait to see what this cohort builds.

In 2025, we set out to grow this economy across five pillars: builders, apps, ownership, markets, and bringing everyone onchain. We processed over $17T in stablecoin volume across 26 local currencies and 17 countries. We became the #1 onchain venue for BTC spot trading. We launched and grew the Base App in 140+ countries. We funded 50+ teams through Base Batches and saw new crypto native markets emerge across creators, predictions, perpetuals, and more.

Across all of this, one thing became clear: the current stage of crypto is upgrading the financial system, connecting the world in a global economy. Stablecoins are becoming fast, free, global money used by hundreds of millions of people. Any asset — stock, currencies, predictions, protocol tokens, art, startup equity — can now be tokenized, traded, settled, and built on top of by anyone, anywhere, 24/7. Prediction markets are letting people put skin in the game on what they believe. And AI agents are discovering these markets as their native economy, building, owning, and trading alongside us.

Our goal is to build a foundation for this global economy with Base. In 2026, we’re focusing on:

1. Building global markets

2. Scaling payments and stablecoins 

3. Being the home for builders

Building Global Markets

Every asset on earth is coming onchain and every market is going 24/7. Base is building those global markets onchain — the trusted infrastructure and app where any asset can be tokenized, any market traded, and anyone can participate.

1. Upgrade the chain for markets: purpose-built market infrastructure at the chain level, new ERCs for smart accounts and tokens, and scaling to maintain sub-second settlement at sub-cent cost

2. Bring every major asset and market to Base: equities, commodities, and every major asset class, in every market structure: native issuance, tokenization, predictions, perpetuals, spot

3. Make Base App the trusted place to trade everything, available everywhere: trade millions of assets 24/7, discover what’s trending from friends and top traders, and grow your wealth

Scaling payments and stablecoins 

Stablecoins are becoming the money layer of the internet — $17T in volume on Base last year and growing. Base is building the rails to make stablecoin payments low-cost, instant, private, and available everywhere.

1. Upgrade the chain for payments: privacy primitives, native account abstraction and stablecoin gas payments, and protocol-level support for memos, policies, and rewards.

2. Create the most liquid markets for stablecoins: quality stablecoins for every currency in the world with easy to access liquidity for trading, borrowing, and lending 

3. Make Base App the easiest way to save, spend, and pay anyone: earn yield on your USDC, spend it anywhere, and borrow against your wealth.

Be the home for builders

The global economy is a flywheel. Builders build apps and markets, bring new demand, and grow the economy with their ingenuity and hard work. In 2026, Base is building the systems that help every builder (human or agent) spin this flywheel faster.

1. Upgrade the chain for agents: agent-native smart accounts, docs, & CLI+MCP access and standards like x402 to help agents do anything with money in a fast, easy, trusted way

2. Grow a based builder community: Base Batches, builder councils, and ecosystem programs that help the best teams and builders find their footing, get funded, and build scalable businesses.

3. Measure, incentivize, and grow the economy: ERC-8021 builder codes, analytics dashboards, liquidity incentives, and growth programs that reward those who bring more users and volume.

We win together

We share this because we've always believed in building in the open: sharing where we're headed, listening to our community, and evolving based on what we learn together. The global economy belongs to all of us. Let's build.

Everything you do has value. It’s time you earned from it.

At Base, our mission is to build a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. 

We started by building the rails to move money globally for less than a cent and in less than a second. Now we’re focused on helping billions of people make it in this new economy with the Base App.

The Base App is an everything app that brings together social, trading, payments, app discovery, and earning into one place.

It’s built on a very simple new reality: In the app, everything is tokenized and tradable — protocols, apps, creators, posts and more — and it’s all directly valued in the free, open market. By putting value directly into your hands, we’re creating a market where everyone shares in the upside and traders can back the next generation of builders and creators.

Starting today, the Base App is available to everyone in more than 140 countries. 

The "For You" Page of the New Onchain Economy

When you open the app, the feed may look familiar, but it behaves differently – because it’s a feed that can make you money. It's a new kind of social feed built on open protocols like Zora and Farcaster where everything you create or build has value.

• Discover the internet’s best assets: Find new creators, trending tokens, viral content, or new communities forming in real time. Everything single thing you see is tokenized and tradeable, unlocking a new way of earning. 

• Be early, trade instantly. See what your friends are trading and copy their moves so you don’t miss out. Set up quick buy to trade preset amounts of any asset just by double-tapping a post.

• Trade millions of assets. Base is becoming the best place to trade every single asset on the market, from Bitcoin, to Solana tokens, to tokenized equities and perpetual futures.

• Follow the alpha: Track top traders, turn on notifications when they trade, and discover new trending coins by market cap, liquidity, or volume.

We’ve completely reimagined what it looks like to trade, stripping away the complexity of traditional exchanges and replacing it with speed and social context directly in your feed.

Countless ways to make money 

In the new global economy, everyone can have the freedom to participate on their own terms. With Base App, this means earning through your content, trading activity, and more everyday actions. 

• Earn when people interact with your posts. Get a portion of the transaction fees immediately when people trade your content. 

• Trade with friends and agents in encrypted chat: Share trades, send crypto, and interact with AI agents to manage your portfolio or execute trades, all through encrypted DMs.

• Get rewarded from games, tools, and more: Discover and play games to earn or access DeFi apps to stake and lend crypto. No downloads or switching tabs required. 

• Grow your money: Earn up to 3.35% APY just by holding USDC in the app.

Earn from anything you create. 

The shift to onchain social means more opportunities for you to build a community that earns with your success. 

• Grow with your creator coin: Creator coins let creators monetize their value directly, not just through ads, merch, or brand deals. These coins create a direct economic relationship between the creator and their fans. When a creator succeeds, the community shares in the upside. New creators are being added daily. 

• Get paid instantly: Unlike traditional social networks where you wait for ad revenue, creator earnings flow right to your wallet when people trade your posts. There are no follower minimums, view thresholds, or payout delays. If people engage, you earn.

• Bring your content from other social networks: We’ve partnered with Repurpose.io so creators can bring their content from social platforms into the Base App automatically. Learn more at repurpose.io/base.

Get Started and Earn Rewards

To celebrate the launch of the Base App, we are distributing rewards from a pool of USDC for a limited time. From now until 12pm Pacific time on December 21st, you can participate just by signing up, using the app, making trades, and inviting friends.

The future of the internet is open, global, rewarding, and built on Base.

Download the Base App today. 

Features may not be available in all regions. This page and the content herein is for informational purposes only and does not constitute the provision of investment advice.  This material is not (i) an offer, or solicitation of an offer, to invest in, or to buy or sell, any interests or shares, or to participate in any investment or trading strategy, (ii) intended to provide accounting, legal, or tax advice, or investment recommendations. The information is believed to be current as of the date indicated and may not be updated or otherwise revised to reflect information that subsequently became available or a change in circumstances after the date of publication.  Recipients should consult their advisors before making any investment decision.  We provide access to third party services in the Base App only as a convenience, do not have control over their content, do not warrant or endorse, and are not responsible for the availability or legitimacy of, the content, products, assets, or services on or accessible from those third party services (including any related websites, resources or links displayed therein). When accessing and transacting on or with third party services using the Base App, you understand that unless otherwise stated, you are at no time transacting with, or transferring your assets to, Coinbase. Your use of any third party service may also be subject to additional terms and conditions between you, on the one hand, and the provider(s) of such third party service, on the other hand. USDC rewards rate is subject to change and can vary by region. Customers will be able to see the latest applicable rates directly within their accounts.

A bridge, not an island

To build a global economy, we need to make it interoperable and connected; and being a bridge, not an island, has been a core value of Base since day one. If we want to bring the world onchain, we need to make it dead simple for people to move assets at the speed of the internet, discover new apps no matter which chain they’re built on, and unlock value wherever it exists.

To make this vision a reality, we’re excited to launch a new bridge between Base and Solana, enabling anyone to move assets across both ecosystems.

The bridge is now live on mainnet and rolling out for anyone to use in apps including Zora, Aerodrome, Virtuals, Flaunch, and Relay. Users will be able to trade SOL, CHILLHOUSE, TRENCHER, and many more Solana assets on Base.

The bridge is secured by Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), via a bespoke cross-chain oracle, alongside Coinbase. Coinbase and Chainlink CCIP node operators each independently verify all messages, ensuring token transfers between Base and Solana are safe and reliable.

What the Base-Solana bridge unlocks

The bridge enables movement of assets across Base and Solana, allowing anyone to deposit and use SOL in Base apps, import any Solana asset into Base, and export any Base asset into Solana. This opens up a range of new cross-chain experiences:

• Base builders can integrate the bridge to support Solana assets (SOL and SPL tokens) natively in their apps.

• Users can trade and use assets across chains in apps that integrate the bridge, regardless of whether they're on Base or Solana.

• Anyone can bridge assets between Base and Solana to make them tradable and usable on both chains.

The Base-Solana bridge is open-source on GitHub and available for any developer to integrate into their app on mainnet, so they can support Solana assets natively and deliver smooth cross-chain experiences. See the docs and start building.

Building an open & connected economy for everyone

This is a major step towards our goal for Base to serve as a hub for the everything economy: every asset, across every network, at any time, and Solana is just the beginning.

If you’re a builder, see the docs to integrate the bridge and support assets across Base and Solana. If you’re a user, the bridge is rolling out for anyone to use in apps including Zora, Aerodrome, Virtuals, Flaunch, and Relay.

Follow us on X, the Base app, and join our Discord to start building — and follow the Base team and Base community leaders to stay up to date.

Our mission at Base is to build a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. To do this, we need more founders to build onchain businesses so that anyone, anywhere can participate in the global economy.

That’s why today’s announcement from Y Combinator is so important. Request for Startups: Fintech 3.0, created in collaboration with Base and Coinbase Ventures, invites founders to build entirely new financial systems onchain. With new policy developments such as the GENIUS Act aiming to provide greater regulatory clarity, mature infrastructure that processes <1 second, <1 cent payments globally, and growing consumer adoption proven by billions in stablecoin settlements, founders may find new opportunities to build onchain.

Why Fintech 3.0 is happening now

Three major shifts have aligned to make this the moment for onchain finance:

• Regulatory clarity: The GENIUS Act is designed to establish a federal framework for stablecoins in the US, similar to the system that banks already use. Since it went into effect, the stablecoin market cap has grown by over $30 billion, and major companies like Amazon and Walmart have signaled interest in exploring stablecoin initiatives. For years, regulatory uncertainty was the main obstacle. Now, founders can build more confidently, with clearer rules of the road.

• Infrastructure maturity: Layer 2 chains have matured significantly, making it easier, faster, and cheaper for developers to build, and for people anywhere to transact onchain. This year, Base achieved its north star of <1 second, <1 cent transactions and now has nearly $15 billion in assets on platform - proving that L2s can power money movement at scale.

• Market demand: Real-world crypto adoption is growing rapidly. DEX activity is at an all-time high, with Aerodrome alone averaging $700M+ in daily trading volume on Base in recent weeks. YC alumni like Kontigo and DolarApp serve millions of people in local markets across Latin America. Coinbase Ventures-backed El Dorado has processed $200 million for nearly 1 million users in just the past year. And the broader numbers support this: 560 million people using crypto worldwide and $30 trillion in stablecoin settlements last year (3x YoY growth).

The financial system is moving onchain

To build a global economy, Base is committed to bringing financial assets onchain, enabling faster, cheaper, near-instant settlement on onchain rails. Traditional finance moves slowly because it was built decades ago. ACH transfers take days, wire transfers are expensive, and foreign exchange fees eat into every transaction across borders. Building on Base’s crypto rails unlocks:

• Instant global settlement: Anyone can send USDC anywhere in the world in under one second for less than one cent. Companies like Shopify are already taking advantage of this, with Coinbase and Shopify partnering together to bring USDC payments on Base to millions of merchants worldwide. 

• Always-on markets: DeFi protocols operate 24/7 without downtime, enabling instant global transactions at internet speed. On Base, users can swap USDC and EURC with a 0.05% fee through Aerodrome, compared to traditional forex markets that cost up to 3% and take days to settle.

• Programmable money: Crypto creates new financial primitives impossible in traditional systems. Smart contracts can automatically execute complex financial logic, from streaming payments that flow continuously to AI agents that can hold and manage assets.

The opportunities ahead

YC highlighted three areas where there’s massive potential for founders to build:

1. Stablecoins

Dollar stablecoins proved the model. But the next wave is local currencies and tools that let people get the benefits of crypto without defaulting to the dollar. We’re already seeing momentum: EURC, CADC, IDRX, and 10+ other local stablecoins have launched on Base independently. Together, stablecoins on Base account for more than $4B in value. That demand is just the beginning.

Founders can build across the entire stack. Better on/off ramps, savings products for emerging markets, or the infrastructure that helps traditional businesses accept stablecoin payments. The prize is huge: Bringing global financial stability to billions.

2. Tokenization and Trading

The same rails that make stablecoins work apply to every asset, radically changing what they are and who can own them. Assets that have historically been illiquid and locked behind layers of middlemen can now be owned, traded, and used by anyone, anywhere. The assets with the most friction and middlemen today have the most to gain from moving onchain.

Think programmable equity tokens for stock options. Global access to stocks, ETFs, and private credit markets. It’s already happening: J.P. Morgan just launched USD-backed deposit tokens (JPMD) on Base through Kinexys, enabling institutional clients to settle payments instantly at a fraction of a cent. 

3. Apps and Agents

The next great consumer platforms won’t be built on walled gardens. They’ll be built onchain, because this enables true ownership, direct creator monetization, and composable experiences built on shared and open rails. The Base app is built on open protocols and brings together a social network, app discovery, chat, payments, and trading all in one place. On Base, you own what you create and earn from what you do. On most social media apps, you're the product, but on Base, you're in control and can earn money directly from your content.

AI + wallets is another frontier. Clanker, an autonomous AI agent on Base, instantly launches tokens for users through simple text commands, generating over $13 million in revenue in its first five months. We're seeing AI agents like Bankr execute trades, Byte AI order food, Onit create prediction markets, and Ohara write code to build apps.

Y Combinator wants to hear from you

If you’re building for this new reality, or have an even bigger vision for what this new era of Fintech unlocks, we want to hear from you. Together, YC, Base, and Coinbase Ventures are excited to support developers building onchain. Apply here for the next YC batch.

Follow us on X, the Base app, and join our Discord to start building — and follow the Base team and Base community leaders to stay up to date.

Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or investment advice. References to legislation, companies, or third-party projects are provided for context only and do not constitute an endorsement by Base, Coinbase, or Coinbase Ventures. Base provides open and neutral infrastructure; third-party projects mentioned are independent from Base.

Exploring a network token

Until now, Base had not considered issuing a network token.

When Base launched, our priority was clear: To build a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly chain and ecosystem. Launching a token wasn’t necessary to reach those goals, and we wanted to focus on the core product. 

This year, we’ve achieved our north star of sub-second, sub-cent transactions, and we’ve expanded beyond a chain into an open stack that makes it simple for anyone to build, trade, and earn onchain.

As we look toward building a global onchain economy, we believe it should be open and accessible. As the ecosystem has grown and community participation has deepened, it’s made us reconsider our philosophy. Exploring a network token is one path toward making our vision of a global onchain economy real, and a Base network token has the potential to accelerate Base’s decentralization and expand opportunities for builders and creators across the ecosystem.

We're in the early phases of our exploration, and don’t have any specifics to share around timing, design, or governance. As we consider the possibilities, we have three commitments to the community:

1. We remain deeply committed to Ethereum and will continue to build on Ethereum.

2. As a US company, we’re committed to working with regulators and legislators, and doing this right.

3. We’re committed to bringing the community along with us - we’re building in the open, listening, and learning.

If and when we move forward with a token, it will be grounded in principles, values, and in alignment with our long-term mission: to build a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom.

What else we announced at BaseCamp 2025

At BaseCamp, we also shared major updates on how we’re helping the ecosystem move forward. Overall, our goal is to make Base the best place to build, grow, and earn.

Bridge between Base and Solana

We believe Base should be a bridge, not an island. We can’t bring the world onchain if everyone is building separate, siloed ecosystems. We want Base to be a hub for the entire onchain economy — the everything chain where you can do anything — from payments, to trading, to building apps, to posting on socials. 

We also believe that a global economy must be interoperable and connected. Users should be able to discover new apps, try new things, and unlock value wherever it exists, and builders should be able to reach users across chains seamlessly.

That’s why we’re excited to announce a bridge between Base and Solana. 

The bridge lets you move seamlessly across chains by bridging your assets between ERC20 and SPL tokens, so you can do things like:

• Deposit and use SOL in any Base app

• Bring any Solana asset into any Base app

• Export any Base asset into Solana

This means builders can tap into more users and liquidity, and users can access the global onchain economy more easily.

The bridge is now open-source on Github and available on testnet, and it’ll be live on mainnet in the next few weeks. 

This is just the beginning. Our goal is for Base to be an interoperable hub for the global onchain economy, and we’ll be adding support for more chains in the future.

Base Batches 002

We know it can be hard to get started. We created Base Batches to provide a clear pathway for any builder to take an idea, turn it into a product, and then grow that product into a business.

Earlier this year, Base Batches brought together 5,000+ developers from 100+ countries. Out of those, 77 teams made it to the finals, received mentorship, and earned a spot at our inaugural demo day. We awarded over $1 million in funding.

Base Batches gives new projects the stage, tools, and community they need to build a useful app, reach quality users, and grow fast.

Base Batches 002 launches September 29. Here’s what’s new this time around:

1. Funding, mentorship, and distribution from day one for new developers

2. A global environment where creators and founders can test ideas quickly

3. A Demo Day at Devconnect in Argentina to showcase the best projects to the world

Go to basebatches.xyz to learn more and apply.

Base App Updates

This summer we launched the Base app, an everything app that brings together social networking, app discovery, chat, payments, and trading in one place. Since we launched on an invite-only beta in July, the waitlist has grown to over 1 million people, and we’re thrilled to see creators earning when they use the app. So far, over $500K+ in creator earnings have been paid out, and over 50% of users who posted have earned.

The Base App is designed not just for users, but for builders: it gives you direct distribution to millions of people and makes it easy to launch, test, and grow your app from day one. That means builders who publish to the Base App can instantly tap into a community of users who are engaged, earning, and looking for new experiences.

We’re still refining the new app experience, and we’re constantly listening to feedback, making improvements, and shipping updates. Since July, we’ve shipped:

• Easier discovery of trending coins

• Seamless in-feed trading

• Faster performance on Android

• A new web experience for so you can share posts anywhere

Join the waitlist for Base App here: https://join.base.app/ 

We’re expanding access every week and plan to open the app to everyone later this year. If you’re building on Base, now is the time to start building mini apps so you’re ready. Over 40% of Base app beta users are engaging with mini apps already.

And to make building mini apps easier, we launched Base Build, a hub for builders to get user analytics, distribution, and rewards. You can view metrics like active users, session time, which of your acquisition channels are working best, plus claim $500 in free gas credits, with more builder rewards coming soon. If you’re building a mini app, head over to base.dev to register it today.

Stay based and keep building

BaseCamp is all about connecting the community, reflecting on our progress, and working to build together towards a better future. We’re going to be sharing updates from BaseCamp on X throughout the week. Watch along, send us your feedback, and keep building. 

Disclaimer:

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any token or other security in any jurisdiction. Any potential token activity would occur, if at all, in compliance with applicable laws.

This post contains forward-looking statements based on information and estimates available to us as of the date hereof. Unless required by law, we expressly disclaim any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Features described may be limited or unavailable in certain jurisdictions; access is subject to geofencing, sanctions screening, and partner terms. Rewards and advertising programs are subject to change; eligibility, caps, and terms apply. Bridges and protocols involve smart-contract and cross-chain risk.

Use of any feature remains subject to the Base Account and Base app Terms of Service and Base Terms of Service.

Nearly two years ago, we launched Base with a vision to build a global economy that fosters innovation, creativity, and freedom. We set out to make getting onchain simple and accessible, with transactions faster than a second and cheaper than a cent. Since then, we've also invested in providing the tools and support that help builders create amazing and fun onchain apps. Now, we're making it even simpler for anyone to discover and enjoy these experiences anywhere onchain.

Here's a look at everything we announced as part of our A New Day One livestream:

The New Base Family

Base is growing from a chain to an open stack built to empower builders, creators, and people everywhere to build apps, grow businesses, create what they love, and earn onchain.  The three parts of the Base stack work together to support the future of an open, global economy for everyone: 

• Base Chain: An open network for the global economy. Formerly just “Base,” the secure, fast, and low-cost Ethereum L2, built on the Superchain empowering a global onchain economy at scale. With today’s mainnet launch of Flashblocks, we’re reducing effective block times from 2 seconds to just 200 milliseconds, making Base Chain 10x faster. Learn more. 

• Base Build: Our continued commitment to fostering a vibrant builder ecosystem at base.org/build. Base Build will continue to provide builders with the tools and support they need to create the next wave of onchain experiences. This includes the new Base Build dashboard that will help teams build, grow, and monetize their mini apps.

• Base App: Your new home, onchain. Built on open protocols, the next evolution of Coinbase Wallet is more than a wallet, it’s where you create, earn, trade, discover apps and chat with friends all in one place. The next version is in beta now. Join the waitlist at base.app.

Alongside this evolution, we’ve reimagined how Base looks and feels, with a new visual identity created in the open and shaped in collaboration with artists, builders, and the community. A truly decentralized internet deserves a brand built with everyone, not handed down from the top.

Introducing The Base App

Coinbase Wallet is now the Base app, evolving from a wallet into an everything app that brings together social, apps, chat, payments, and trading. Anyone can manage their assets, post, connect with others, and directly earn from their work.

We believe the next chapter of the internet won’t come from big platforms. It’ll come from creators. That’s why we rebuilt the Base app from the ground up, not just as a wallet, but as a new kind of open social network. One where you own what you post. Where your work earns. Where your feed is yours. Now, anyone can post, trade, chat, and get rewarded. Here’s what we’re excited about:

An open social network

On today’s social media platforms, the platforms maintain control over content and users, and capture most of the value everyone creates. With decentralized social media, no single company owns user data or content, putting users directly in control. Creators can earn directly from their content and have the freedom to take their identity and content with them across different apps, rather than being locked into one platform.

The new social feed in the Base app is powered by Farcaster, which means creators can own their content and earn directly from their success. Creators don’t need to rely on brand deals or massive followings to earn their first dollar. Anyone, anywhere in the world can get on Base and earn from day one. We're enabling a flywheel between creators and their audience where any user can easily tip or collect their favorite content directly, creating a new economic model for creators. Some key features of the new Base app include:  

• Earn from your content: Every post is a coin that can be bought, powered by Zora. Creators can earn with no follower minimum, brand deals, or geo restrictions.

• Watch your network trade: See what your friends are buying and swapping, and jump in without leaving the feed. Discover new tokens and trade in just a few taps.

• Post and be rewarded: Top creators who post and engage with the community on the Base app will earn weekly rewards for a limited time, subject to applicable terms and conditions. Payouts occur weekly directly in the app, where you can track all your earnings as a creator.

Everything you need in one place 

Everything onchain is now in one app. No downloads or switching tabs or apps just to share something fun.

• Explore mini apps: Mini apps live right in your feed. Play games, earn yield, create your own prediction market, and more. Pin your favorites, discover promoted apps, and see what’s trending. Hundreds of mini apps are available on day one, including:

  • Remix: Play, create, and share games instantly, no installs, no coding, just fun. Turn your game ideas into reality in minutes using AI tools, and play thousands of games built by other users.

  • Noice: Support the people and content you love by automatically tipping creators onchain. Enable your likes, follows, comments, and reposts to automatically tip creators. 

  • Decentralized Pictures: Co-create cinema onchain. Watch trailers, remix them, and coin them, with rewards going directly to creators. 

• Access millions of coins: Buy, sell, and swap millions of onchain coins with fast and integrated transaction flows within the Base app. Your keys, your crypto. 

• Send money with just a tap: Send or receive USDC on Base for free by using NFC tap-to-pay in person. Transfer in seconds and get it immediately in your account. 

• Customize your space:  You own your social profile. Customize it, theme it, and bring it with you anywhere you go. 

• Earn, just by holding crypto: Activate USDC rewards and earn up to *4.1% APY just by holding USDC.

Chat with your friends

Chat is now more than conversations. Powered by XMTP, they’re living, breathing spaces where you can share apps, send money, or even message AI agents — and it’s all end-to-end encrypted and private.

• Build a community: Create group chats, manage conversations, and share your social content, all without leaving the app.

• Transact with AI: Make trades, send money, or even balance your portfolio with the help of AI agents like Bankr or Mamo that integrate directly with messaging. 

• Send funds to friends: Send or receive USDC on Base instantly within your chats with no transaction fees. 

• Keep everything private and secure: Every conversation is end-to-end encrypted, so you have ownership and privacy of your discussions.

Base Account: A Universal Identity, Owned By You

Powering the Base app experience is Base Account, a universal sign-in for the open internet. It’s an evolution of smart wallet, now easier to use than ever. 

Signing up for the Base app automatically creates a Base Account, which is designed to work across apps, chains, and will soon expand to even more platforms. Now you can “Sign in with Base,” and your account details will follow you across the onchain ecosystem. You’ll be able to manage your Base account in Base app and account.base.app. Once you create an account, it’s yours to own, anywhere onchain. 

Developers can learn about adding “Sign in with Base” to your app here.

Base Pay: The Fastest Way to Checkout With USDC

Alongside the Base Account, we’re rolling out Base Pay, a new express checkout that is the fastest way to pay with USDC, making commerce fast, low-cost, and borderless. Save your name, shipping address, and email once to your Base Account, and check out in seconds, anywhere it’s supported.

Last month, we introduced a partnership with Shopify that will bring USDC payments on Base to millions of merchants worldwide. Starting today, Base Pay is a new payment method option available to Shopify merchants, bringing fast onchain checkout to Shopify stores. You can try it out today at storefronts like Erewhon’s online shop. In the US, Shopify plans to provide 1% cash back to customers when they pay with USDC, at no cost to the merchant (coming later this year). Merchants are automatically cashed out in their local currency with no foreign exchange or multi-currency fees. 

Base Pay is available to any developer or merchant that wants to accept USDC payments. You can learn more about accepting Base Pay here.

A New Day One for Base 

Today marks a new chapter for Base and everyone building with us. This vision brings everything together: social, identity, apps, payments. All powered by Base. All open by default.

What isn’t changing is that we’ll continue to build in the open, with open source code, open standards, and open markets. This isn’t something we’re building alone. It’s being shaped by thousands of developers, creators, and communities building on Base every day. We invite everyone to sign up to try the new Base app beta, share your feedback, and most importantly, keep building alongside us. Your participation is what will truly shape the next iteration of the internet.

The Base app beta is starting to roll out now for everyone already on the waitlist. If you want early access, get on the waitlist at base.app.

The global economy is no longer a distant future. It's here. Join us and let’s build the next chapter of the internet, together.

Follow us on X, Farcaster, and join our Discord to get building — and follow the Base team and Base community leaders to stay up to date.

*Coinbase does not intend for the reward-bearing products described herein to constitute a securities offering, and purchasing these products is not the same as investing in a securities offering. The rewards rate (up to 4.1 % APY) is subject to change, set at Coinbase’s discretion, and shown in-app for eligible users. USDC Rewards on Base app is rolling out in the U.S. and is unavailable in the EU or Canada; U.S. Base app users must link a Coinbase account to earn. 

This blog contains statements about product features and services that may not yet be available or are provided by third parties. These forward-looking statements are based on our current plans and may change or be postponed without notice. Content is for educational purposes only–nothing here is financial advice or a buy/sell recommendation. Use of any feature remains subject to the Base Account and Base app Terms of Service and Base Terms of Service.

The financial system is moving onchain

To build a global economy, Base is committed to bringing financial assets onchain—enabling faster, cheaper, near-instant settlement on onchain rails.

Today, money still moves through closed systems like ACH, SWIFT, and Fedwire. These networks were not built for programmability or real-time operations—often taking days, introducing friction, and resulting in capital sitting idle. Onchain infrastructure changes that. By using Base, institutions can move capital globally in seconds, for less than a cent.

Moving assets on fast, cheap, secure onchain payment rails

To take advantage of these global onchain payment rails, J.P. Morgan is piloting a USD-backed permissioned deposit token on Base called JPMD. These are USD-denominated and backed 1:1 by deposits—combining the programmability of onchain finance with the trust and compliance that regulated financial institutions require. It’s specifically designed to eventually allow J.P. Morgan institutional clients to move money onchain—24/7, instantly, securely, at a fraction of a cent.

J.P. Morgan is the latest addition to the growing list of 200+ global financial institutions that Coinbase's Crypto-as-a-Service platform supports. These institutions—including banks, brokers, fintechs, and payment providers—leverage the platform to build crypto-powered products for custody, trading, tokenization, and payments.

Base is for global capital markets

Onchain capital is here. It’s faster, more liquid, always available, and being built on Base. We’re unlocking a new class of financial tools, such as:

• Real-time settlement of institutional payments and treasury flows

• Onchain liquidity management and cash positioning

• Programmable payouts, lending, and credit infrastructure

• Seamless global reconciliation and reporting

As more institutions bring assets to Base,the onchain global economy is becoming real. J.P. Morgan and traditional financial institutions moving onchain is a major leap forwards towards one of our key strategic pillars for 2025: “Base is for markets.” The more assets and liquidity we bring to Base, the faster we’ll build the global onchain economy—with better, faster, cheaper, and more secure payment rails for money movement.

J.P. Morgan’s deposit token (JPMD) is a permissioned product designed exclusively for eligible institutional clients and is not available to retail or individual consumers. Availability is limited to qualified institutional participants.

What decentralization means for Base

Base’s mission is to build a global onchain economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. We believe this is only possible on a decentralized platform. This is why Base is (1) built on Ethereum, the most secure and decentralized L1, (2) built on the open and permissionless OP Stack, and (3) upholds key Neutrality Principles.

We've been focused on continuously decentralizing, and today we're excited to announce that Base is now at Stage 1 Decentralization.

Achieving Stage 1 Decentralization means Base now has stronger security guarantees and reduced trust assumptions. With fault proofs and a decentralized Security Council in place, network functionality and upgrades are in the hands of a broad set of diverse stakeholders. This creates a more resilient foundation for apps, assets, and the global onchain economy on Base, so that:

1. Builders have infrastructure certainty — the platform can't change the rules unexpectedly

2. The network becomes more resilient, with no single point of failure

3. Everyone can participate in securing and verifying the network

Decentralization stages

Vitalik Buterin's decentralization framework lays out a clear path for Layer-2 rollups on Ethereum, like Base, to progressively and safely decentralize. This framework describes three stages of decentralization:

• Stage 0, or "full training wheels", is a stage where all rollup transactions are posted onchain, but the validity checks of these transactions are done by the chain's operator. State verification is centralized and dependent upon the chain operator.

• Stage 1, or "limited training wheels", introduces a running fault proof or validity proof scheme with the practical authority to accept or reject state roots. It includes a decentralized override mechanism controlled by a diverse set of stakeholders, reducing dependence on chain operators alone.

• Stage 2, or "no training wheels", represents full decentralization, where no group of actors can, even unanimously, post a state root other than the output of the code (except in clearly defined bug scenarios).

How we got to Stage 1 decentralization

Our path to Stage 1 decentralization involved two key milestones:

1. Fault Proofs on Mainnet

In October 2024, we launched Fault Proofs on Base Mainnet after close collaboration with Optimism to bring the OP Stack Fault Proof System to Base. Fault Proofs enable:

• Permissionless proposals: Anyone can propose claims about the state of Base, removing reliance on a central party for state verification.

• Permissionless challenges: If a faulty or fraudulent claim is made, anyone can challenge it within 3.5 days by running the open-source challenger software, with economic incentives for successful challenges.

This dramatically increased the decentralization of Base by allowing anyone to permissionlessly withdraw their funds from Base L2 to Ethereum L1 without relying on centralized actors.

2. Decentralizing upgrades via a Security Council

The final requirement to achieve Stage 1 Decentralization was to further decentralize control of contract upgrades. To do this, Base contract upgrades must now be approved by a diverse group of stakeholders from across the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Security Council for Base consists of 10 independent entities from various jurisdictions. To achieve consensus, the Security Council, Optimism, and Base collectively must reach at least a 75% approval threshold to implement a Base upgrade. This setup ensures that no single entity has enough power to control the upgrade process on its own. As a result, the group responsible for implementing upgrades, which currently includes Base and Optimism, is larger and more decentralized.

What’s next?

While reaching Stage 1 Decentralization is a significant achievement, our journey toward full decentralization continues. Looking ahead, we're focused on:

• Additional proof systems — We're working towards having multiple active proof systems live on Base, to further enhance security and decentralization. A promising avenue we are exploring is ZK-based fault proof systems.

• Advancing toward Stage 2 — We’re committed to further decentralizing and achieving Stage 2. We will continue taking steps toward that goal, including enabling the Security Council to provably detect and adjudicate bugs via the multi-proof system.

Today's achievement of Stage 1 Decentralization fulfills one of our key strategic pillars for 2025: "Base is for everyone." By decentralizing Base, we're building the foundation needed to bring everyone, everywhere onchain and creating a truly global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom.

We're excited to continue building on the Base and Ethereum vision of a more open, decentralized, global onchain economy that is accessible to all.

Follow us on X, Farcaster, and join our Discord to get building — and follow the Base team and Base community leaders to stay up to date.

Base is building for the long-term

Base’s mission is to build a global onchain economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. To further our mission, we need to continue making Base more powerful, easier to use, and faster than ever. We are focused on cultivating an ecosystem of long-term people playing long-term games. We want to support passionate builders who are creating products that solve real needs for real people.

Today, we’re introducing three new building blocks to empower everyone to build onchain: Flashblocks to make Base faster, Base Appchains to help Base scale, and Smart Wallet Sub Accounts to make Base simpler to use.

• Making Base faster: Flashblocks make Base 10x faster by bringing effective block times from 2 seconds to 200 milliseconds; the fastest EVM chain to date. We’re inviting builders to start testing Flashblocks on Base Sepolia testnet today.

• Making Base more powerful: Base Appchains are Layer-3 chains on Base to help apps scale through dedicated blockspace, powered by the op-enclave framework. Appchains are a natural evolution for apps spending significant amounts on gas credits for their end users.

• Making Base simpler: Smart Wallet Sub Accounts are now live on Base testnet — simplifying the UX on Base by reducing wallet pop-ups, improving security, and removing the need to manually manage different onchain accounts.

Base is fast: Flashblocks are now live on testnet

People expect near-instant responses when interacting with apps, and a snappy user experience is key to enabling the global onchain economy.

With Flashblocks, a technology built by Flashbots, Base chain will have 200-millisecond “preconfirmation blocks”. This will make Base 10x faster than it is today, and the fastest EVM chain to date.

Flashblocks are partial blocks issued by the block builder and streamed to nodes every 200 milliseconds, allowing users to experience early confirmation times with native revert protection. This architecture draws inspiration from innovations in block propagation and execution — such as Solana’s shreds and Celestia's data squares — while introducing novel optimizations for the rollup context. Learn more about how Flashblocks work in Flashbots’ documentation.

Flashblocks are now live on Base Sepolia testnet, with a path to mainnet in Q2. See the demo and start building with Flashblocks today.

Base is powerful: Base Appchains are now live

Base Appchains are Layer-3 chains that provide dedicated blockspace for apps looking to scale further on Base. High traffic, mature apps can take advantage of dedicated infrastructure powered by Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP). Apps that are spending significant funds sponsoring gas (such as with CDP Paymaster) should consider launching an Appchain for a more customized experience to meet demand.

Base Appchains are:

• Built for scale: Using op-enclave, chain state is proven immediately using AWS S3 and AWS Nitro Enclaves. More technical details on how and why we built this can be found in our Engineering Blog. Each Appchain is supported by enterprise-grade infra, with a fully managed sequencer and nodes, maintenance and upgrades, and a ready-made block explorer.

• Customizable: Appchains offer a series of customization options, including custom gas tokens, permission allowlists, and custom fee logic.

• Builder-friendly: Appchains are managed through CDP with builder-friendly pricing and compatibility with Base builder tools like Smart Wallet and CDP Paymaster.

Blocklords, Super Champs, and Metacade are launching Appchains to meet the high demands of onchain gamers. Proof 8 and MVL offer real-world services that must operate at the scale Base Appchains are prepared to deliver. Decentralized Pictures is launching an Appchain on Base because of the throughput and scalability needed to distribute onchain cinematic art. Horizen’s Base Appchain will support real-world privacy applications, benefitting from Appchain programmability.

Base is simple: Smart Wallet Sub Accounts are now live on testnet

Over the past year, embedded app wallets have become popular because of their ease of use. However, they can also lead to disjointed experiences — forcing users to juggle multiple accounts, fund each separately, and keep track of assets spread across different accounts.

Smart Wallet Sub Accounts significantly improve UX for end users and DevX for builders. With fine-grained spend limits and the benefits of a single universal account, we are moving closer to a world where onchain apps “just work”. With Smart Wallet Sub Accounts:

• Users can manage all of their onchain accounts from one universal wallet, removing the need to manually manage assets across multiple apps.

• Users encounter less friction, with fewer signatures, fewer pop-ups, and a streamlined onchain experience.

• Users can securely fund new accounts directly from their universal wallet with spend permissions, helping solve the cold start problem for builders.

Smart Wallet Sub Accounts are powered by our new underlying accounts framework — combining spend permissions, hierarchical account ownership, and a new ERC developed by the Base team.

Smart Wallet Sub Accounts are ready for integration on Base testnet today, and will be live on mainnet in Q2.

Read our engineering blog to dive into the technical details of Sub Accounts.

Base is for builders

Since day one, Base’s goal has been to empower builders with the tools to create world-class onchain apps. With these new building blocks, we’re making Base faster, simpler, and more powerful than ever before.

And to bring it all together, we launched a new hub — featuring tools, guides, stories, and more — to serve as the home base for builders creating the onchain future:

• A new website with everything you need to build, scale, and monetize your onchain app. Start building today at base.org/builders.

• A new social handle to keep you in the loop on everything that’s happening in the Base builder community. Follow @buildonbase.

• A new GitHub for our open-source codebase, for those ready to roll up their sleeves and contribute directly to Base. Get involved at github.com/base.

What will you build?

Coinbase Wallet and Base are committed to building a global onchain economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. To achieve this mission, we need to make getting onchain as easy as possible – in every country in the world. However, a common barrier in many countries is being able to purchase crypto with local currency. Verification processes can be long and conversion rates lead to high fees.

To solve this, Coinbase Wallet is integrating with Onboard, a global peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange. With Onboard P2P, Coinbase Wallet users can purchase crypto using local currency from a network of seller merchants in as little as 5 minutes, with no need for ID verification if you buy under $100 USD in total.

How Onboard Works

Onboard operates a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange protocol that connects local buyers and sellers of cryptocurrency in different markets. The process works like this:

• Buyers select the cryptocurrency and amount

• Onboard matches the buyer to a seller in their region

• An escrow is set up to facilitate a secure trade for both parties.

• Once funds are confirmed, the cryptocurrency is released to the buyer

If you’re in Nigeria, try out the Onboard experience in Coinbase Wallet today. Simply select Pay with Onboard P2P when buying crypto. You’ll be directed to a simple and secure experience with Onboard, where you can select local payment options and be connected to a seller. Once payment is made, you’ll receive your crypto in as little as 5 minutes.

Expansion to More Countries in 2025

Nigeria is the first of many countries where Coinbase Wallet is offering easier access to Onboard’s peer-to-peer exchange. Onboard is aiming to enable its payment option in over 50 countries in the coming year, with Argentina, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, and Turkey support coming soon. Contact Onboard if you’d like to be a merchant in these countries.

https://x.com/CoinbaseWallet/status/1886822569334181966

Last year, we made great progress with Coinbase Wallet by simplifying onboarding and transactions with Smart Wallet, building more options to buy crypto in over 140 countries, and rewarding people who bring their money onchain. We also announced that Coinbase Wallet and Base would join forces to help power the onchain flywheel.

Base supports developers who build onchain, Coinbase Wallet onboards people, and those people discover and experience great apps. This is the way the flywheel should work. But, the reality is that it’s not working as well as it should today.

We’re seeing all-time highs in downloads for Coinbase Wallet, but these people come onchain to buy a coin, and then stop there. Our goal is to take them further.

That’s what 2025 is all about — doing more than just getting people through the door by connecting them to the incredible products that builders are creating every day. It’s about helping builders go viral with their products, coins, and creativity.

To do this, we’re building the next evolution of Coinbase Wallet.

Coinbase Wallet’s big rocks for 2025

We’re rebuilding Coinbase Wallet into an open platform that anyone can build and grow into, and we’re going to help builders go viral. To do this, we’re focusing on:

• Helping apps get discovered. We’re adding a social graph to the Coinbase Wallet app by leveraging Farcaster, an open, social protocol that anyone can build on top of. We’ll use Farcaster to power a full social feed, as well as mini-apps with Frames v2. These are bite-sized onchain experiences — created in minutes — allowing users to take actions without leaving the feed.

• Making Coinbase Wallet 10x faster and easier to use. We’re rewriting everything from the ground up. We started this late last year, have made incredible progress, and will be rolling out the first beta in the coming months.

• Evolving our brand to represent more than Coinbase Wallet and Base.  Since 2023, we’ve seen an explosion of creativity from the community and feel that we need a brand that not only represents us, but something that the community can use and own themselves. It takes everyone working together to build a better internet.

Here’s what’s changing

As we work to carry out this vision, we’re excited about what this means for the onchain economy.

• First, we’re going to make Coinbase Wallet work incredibly well for payments. Crypto payments are a core use case and a key foundation for everything else, and today they’re still too hard. 2025 is the year we make payments just work.

• For builders, we’re going to help them reach millions of users coming onchain with mini-apps supported across the social feed. It’ll be the easiest way to get distribution and go viral.

• For traders, we’re going to accelerate the onchain network that makes viral token moments happen. We’re building a wallet that lets you follow, trade, and share with your social network, all in one place.

• For creators, we’re going to help you connect and earn from your creativity, with millions of people ready to join your community.

• And for everyone onchain, we’re going to make it incredibly easy for you to find the apps you want to use, the coins you want to buy, the projects you love, and the communities you want to be a part of.

2025 will be the year Coinbase Wallet becomes the place for distribution for builders, creators, and communities. We have a lot to do, and we can’t do this alone.

Want to be a part of it? Start bringing your content onchain, and start experimenting with mini-apps that can be part of the onchain social graph. The more people we have building on top of open standards like Farcaster, the faster we bring the world onchain.

Join us on Farcaster and X as we share how all this will unfold, and to be a part of the new beta experience soon.

Our mission

Our mission is to build a global onchain economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. A new internet, built by the people, for the people.

Success looks like the whole world onchain — millions of builders and billions of people — and the only way we get there is by connecting people, builders, and businesses. By inviting the world to build alongside us and building in the open, we’re creating a new kind of internet that supports an open, thriving economy for everyone.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback we consistently hear is that it’s still too hard to join this new economy. This year, we’re focused on simplifying the message, making the products just work, and bringing the whole world onchain.

Our big, hairy, audacious goals for 2025

To bring a billion people onchain, we have to work hard and push ourselves beyond our comfort zones. If we’re hitting every milestone we set, we’re not aiming high enough. So, as we enter 2025, we set some big, hairy, audacious goals that both excite and scare us:

• 25 million people

• 25 thousand developers

• 250 Mgas/s blockspace capacity

• $100 billion assets on platform

• 1 billion transactions on Base in October

When we look back at the end of this year, we’ll know we’re on track if we reached for these goals and they challenged us to go above and beyond. With a bit of luck and a lot of determination, we have a shot at achieving them.

Our five strategic pillars for 2025

To achieve these goals, in 2025, we need to work together. And that means focusing our collective efforts on things that accelerate each other and help us be stronger, together. To help keep us all rowing in the same direction, we want to pull back the curtain and share what the Base core team is doing to make it happen. Our hope is that this inspires you to build with us.

#1 Base is for builders

We will build powerful and open tools that enable anyone to build world-class onchain apps. Whether you’re an advanced onchain developer, a web2 convert, or a total beginner, we want to enable you to build and make an impact.

1. Double down on OnchainKit and the building blocks for world-class apps

2. Ship new tools to help builders embrace AI agents and mini-apps

3. Enable gasless experiences and scale with Paymasters and L3s

#2 Base is for apps

We will nurture a vibrant ecosystem of connected, open onchain apps that grow the number of people using Base. More apps translate to more concrete reasons for every single person to get onchain.

1. Help apps, builders, and creators go viral by giving them more distribution

2. Build new tools to help creators earn more, tell the story of onchain, and grow

3. Make core onchain experiences across social, trading, payments, and messaging

#3 Base is for ownership

We will create a powerful onchain account with seamless funding, identity, and management. We’ll continue our work on Smart Wallet to eliminate complexity for developers and users, make apps just work, and put control back in your hands.

1. New user onboarding in <60s (with funding!) without creating siloed accounts

2. Make apps just work without popups or compromising user sovereignty

3. Enable users to easily leverage their full identity and assets in a secure, private way

#4 Base is for markets

We will make Base the center of the onchain economy with highly liquid, always-on, global capital markets. The more assets and liquidity we bring to Base, the faster the entire financial world will come onchain.

1. Bring Coinbase onchain and grow the number of assets on Base

2. Support 25+ local currency stablecoins to enable every country to come onchain

3. Enable on and offramps in every country around the world

#5 Base is for everyone

We will decentralize, scale, and accelerate Base to enable everyone, everywhere to come onchain. The only way we can build a truly global economy is by making sure it’s built on a decentralized, open platform — and we are proud to do this as part of Ethereum and the Superchain.

1. Achieve Stage 1 decentralization

2. Scale Base’s blockspace capacity to 250 Mgas/s

3. Speed up blocktimes and drive down fees to deliver <1s, <1¢ transactions

These five strategic pillars are what the Base team is focused on today — and we’re building and learning every day. As we do, we’ll continue to evolve our plans and together we’ll bring the world onchain.

How we build in a based way

At the end of the day, it’s not just about what we do in 2025 — it’s also about how we do it. And in 2025, we’re going to stay based. This means:

1. Doing the right thing

2. Working hard

3. Staying optimistic

4. Pushing boundaries with creativity

5. Putting the team over the individual

If all of us can build in a based way, we’ll be able to go faster and further.

The rest is up to us

We’ve shared the Base mission and strategy and how the Base core team is contributing to make it happen. But at the end of the day, we can only succeed if all Base builders step up to make it happen. We win, together.

Are you ready to build alongside us?

Join us on X, Farcaster, and Discord to get building — and follow the Base team and Base community leaders to stay up to day with the Base economy as it grows.

Builders are creating the onchain future, around the world

With Base Around the World, we saw firsthand the real-world power of onchain tools in action, and met with incredible builders who are shaping the vision of a global onchain economy.

Here’s what we learned:

1. Momentum is global. Builders around the world are pushing the limits, and we’re here to invest in their futures. In 2025, we're doubling down on global initiatives, offering more resources, support, and office hours across time zones. We're also hiring country leads for Kenya, Argentina, and the Philippines to ensure local support is as strong as it can be. If you or someone else could be a fit, apply here.

2. Stablecoins are key. To build a global onchain economy, stablecoins are a must. They power critical use cases, from cross-border remittances to local merchant payments to small business payroll. In 2025, we believe Base’s position as the leading L2 makes it uniquely positioned as the premier onchain destination for stablecoins.

3. Local solutions, global impact. Every region has its unique challenges, but there are common themes: control over financial lives, better access to credit, and fairer economics for creators. Builders can solve these problems locally and have a global impact.

Shout-out to our community builders and Buildathon participants

Africa (Kenya)

Our first IRL stop was Kenya, where we met builders tackling social and financial challenges.  We were inspired by grassroots heroes like Maeve, who translated Base docs to Swahili.  Builders like Yele, Njoku, and Elijah passionately and generously support, elevate and mentor builders across Africa. We heard from many builders working to improve cross-border payments, IRL and P2P commerce, and microlending, all through onchain solutions.

Based Africa buildathon had the highest number of projects submitted, and we’re proud to announce 23 winners: Base Sessions, Basepay, The Unbound Project, Flexclub, RideBase, Azza Defi, AfroBase, Lendbit, Delar, Kombat, Yield, learnOnchain, Legitify, Antugrow, Health Trove, baseEastAfrica, Maisha Care, MQR Pay, PayFlip, Base Tours, Data Bud, LearNova, and Element Pay.

We’re super grateful for the builders bringing Africa onchain, including Yele, Yoseph, Dami, Kokocodes, Charis, Harriet, Grammy Boy, JBofLagos, Bernard, DefiDevrel, Miss Purple, Kokkytau, Druxamb, KC Pele, Njoku, David Lumala, Roger, Kago, Chris, and countless others. We had so much fun meeting some of them in person. Check out our conversations with DefiDevrel and HazardKrypto.

Base is committed to Africa’s long-term growth, and we’re starting by hiring a Country Lead in Kenya to help build stronger local support. We can’t wait to meet more of you and continue the journey.

India (Bangalore)

After Kenya, our next stop was Bangalore. We connected with hundreds of builders and participated in an IRL/onchain soccer tournament. Indian builders are laser-focused on building solutions for global audiences . Big shout-out to our Based India buildathon winners, including: Based Coffee, Tike, Basics, SuperBaseNames, DefiLens, TagFi, CultureCo, CastMoney, EtherZap, Lumen, Vox, MiniBase, and Neom.

We’re grateful to all builders who contributed to the Based India buildathon and who are bringing people onchain every day:, Akhil, Sankalp, Denver and the entire Devfolio team, Apoorav, Ashik, Cyber Shakti, Harpreet, Kushal, Pareen, Shubham, Mohit, Tushar, Vraj, Gayatri, and many more.

If you’re a builder in India, and want to stay connected with the builder community, follow Based India, reach out to Saumya (India Country Lead),  and watch this epic recap of our meetup.

Southeast Asia (Bangkok, Singapore, Johor Bahru, and Manila)

After Bangalore, we landed in Bangkok for Devcon and announced the Based SEA winners during our Bangkok Meetup. We opened up Home Base for Devcon, had an incredible breakfast with women+ building on Base, and Jesse Pollak participated in a panel with Vitalik, sharing how Base now passes the walk-away test. Following Devcon, we had meetups in Singapore and closed the tour in Manila, where we participated in the YGG Gaming Summit and announced the launch of Onchain Guilds. We also made a quick stop to visit Balaji and the builders at the Network School.

We can't wait to see more creativity and new use cases come out of SEA. Check out our Based SEA buildathon winners: Cube, AgroFund, Based Chula Students, AutoBase, Onchain Buster, Magnify Cash, StreamFund, Local Coins, Kaivest, Onchain Scholars, WhiteBlue Swap, and Coinbase Smart Passport.

We’re also grateful for the builders who made Based SEA a success, including santosa, 0xwildanr, Atomo, ayvee, aho, Harry, hypersound, Jitz (thanks for your awesome recap vid), kangun, kylepatrick, Nine, PShato, reallyryl, Pm, el, drizz, nael, and many others.

If you’re a builder based in Southeast Asia and want to get involved, follow Based SEA on X and Warpcast.

LatAm (Argentina, virtual)

Although we couldn’t make it to Argentina in person, we’re excited to visit for a full LatAm tour in 2025. Thanks to the Based LatAm community (powered by Odisea) for hosting the virtual buildathon and making it a success.

We’re grateful to cush, Max, chaps, Fer, Juampi, João, Simoneth, Solange, Robert, sweetman, Losi, Carlos, and many more for making the Based Latam buildathon a success and bringing people onchain to Base.

We were excited to see projects across diverse use cases in LatAm, from stablecoins to access to credit and more. Check them out: CrediTalent, Bondi Finance, CLPD Stablecoin, BOBC Stablecoin, BuildMyEvent, Sembrando El Cambio, OpenVino, and AI Agent for Coinbase Wallet.

What’s next

Across the globe, builders have told us they want continuous support — and we’re listening. In 2025 we’re planning to:

• Mentorship and education: We’re launching office hours in Africa, India, and SEA time zones to provide faster support. Plus, we’ve teamed up with RareSkills to offer an intermediate smart contract development bootcamp focused on token standards.

• Hiring: We’re looking for country leads in Kenya, the Philippines, and Argentina, along with more global roles in dev rel, marketing, and engineering. We will continue to grow our country coverage to ensure all builders get the support they need. Check out open positions here.

• Product updates: Stablecoins remain a priority in 2025. Base believes its position as the leading L2 makes it uniquely positioned as the premier onchain destination for stablecoins.. We’re also rolling out new product features to make it even easier to get onchain.

The Base Around the World tour was a journey we’ll never forget, and we’re excited for what’s ahead. Builders, we’ll see you in 2025.

Building towards decentralization

From the beginning of Base, we have championed the belief that creating an open, global onchain economy is only possible on a decentralized platform. This is why Base is:

• Built on Ethereum — the most secure and decentralized L1.

• Built on Optimism’s open-source OP Stack — an open-source public good that serves as the foundation for a Superchain of L2s that will share interoperability, security, and governance.

• Committed to the Law of Chains with Optimism, which includes a commitment to neutrality, a decentralized security model, ecosystem protections, and community governance principles.

• Upholding the Base Neutrality Principles, including user autonomy, unbiased transaction sequencing, discretion with non-public data, and unrestricted withdrawals.

We’re laser-focused on making continuous advancements towards full decentralization. This is why, today, we’re taking the next important step in decentralizing the network: fault proofs are now live on Base Mainnet.

What fault proofs mean for Base

Vitalik’s decentralization framework lays out a path for Layer-2 rollups on Ethereum, like Base, to progressively and safely decentralize. Fault proofs are an essential component of going from Stage 0, in which a rollup has “full training wheels,” to Stage 1, which has “limited training wheels”.

This year, the Base core team collaborated closely with Optimism to bring the OP Stack Fault Proof System to Base. This enables a decentralized approach to proposing and validating L2 state, and paves the way towards more community participation.

Fault proofs have two important capabilities to improve decentralization:

• Permissionless proposals: Fault proofs help validate the state of Base in a decentralized way, allowing any participant to propose claims about the overall state of the chain, and the legitimacy of the transactions on it. This removes reliance on a central party to prove state. Permissionless output proposals go beyond what is required for Stage 1 decentralization.

• Permissionless challenges: If a faulty or fraudulent claim is made (e.g. a malicious attempt to withdraw ETH from the bridge), anyone can challenge it within 3.5 days by running the open-source challenger software included in the OP Stack. Participants who successfully challenge a claim receive the bonds of the invalid claim, creating an economic incentive to help secure the network. This fosters community-driven accountability and control, reducing the need to trust a centralized entity for state verification. With the Fault Proof System, the presence of even a single honest challenger ensures the network will remain secure. To maintain this safeguard, the Base team will operate a challenger continuously.

Together, these changes significantly increase the decentralization of Base and allow anyone to permissionlessly move their funds from Base L2 to Ethereum L1 without relying on any centralized actors.

Next up: Stage 1 decentralization and beyond

Fault proofs are a big step towards Stage 1 decentralization, but we have one more milestone to hit to get there. Today, smart contract upgrades on Base are reviewed and approved by several contributors from the Base and Optimism teams.

Getting to Stage 1 means expanding this set of approvers to a broader, decentralized group of stakeholders — a “security council” — ensuring that Base protocol upgrades are managed without centralized control. Base is on track to complete this final step and achieve Stage 1 decentralization in the coming months.

Looking towards 2025, we’re excited to continue progressing towards full decentralization by taking steps towards Stage 2. Our biggest priority is to support the development of multiple fault proof implementations, such as our recent contributions to standardize L2 state validation and improve compatibility of fault proofs with new execution clients.

With fault proofs now live, we’re excited to continue building on the Base, Superchain, and Ethereum vision of a more decentralized, better internet that is accessible to all.

Building Base with a security-first approach

From day one, Base has been built with a security-first approach — combining Coinbase's enterprise-grade practices with an open-source codebase. At the chain level:

• Base is built on the secure, open-source OP Stack with Optimism, benefiting from extensive audits and community security efforts.

• Coinbase's Protocol Security team thoroughly audited Base, enhancing security and ensuring no critical vulnerabilities before mainnet launch.

• Before mainnet launch, Base engaged over 100 security researchers in a public audit contest, strengthening Base's security through broad community input.

To bring the next billion users onchain, we’re now looking to empower builders with the tools they need to build secure, reliable apps and protocols for their users. A critical component of this is smart contract monitoring, enabling builders to detect potential threats to their app or protocol and take action. But onchain monitoring is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult for builders to set up.

Now, we're taking a major step towards this by offering access to free smart contract monitoring, detection, and analytics for every app or protocol on Base by partnering with Hexagate.

Empowering builders on Base with advanced security tools

For the past year, the Base core team has leveraged Hexagate’s solutions to improve security on Base — using its threat detection ML models, invariant monitoring, and risk intelligence to proactively enhance Base’s security.

These solutions monitor foundational assets, like cbBTC, as well as sophisticated smart contract systems like fault proofs, to deliver comprehensive, real-time insights. Earlier this year, we successfully completed a SEAL Wargame Simulation using the Hexagate platform to stress test our security protocols against incidents.

Through our collaboration with Hexagate, every builder on Base now has free access to tools that enable early threat detection and proactive risk mitigation.

How it works

Builders on Base can now use Hexagate’s enterprise-grade platform to secure their apps and protocols with:

• Hexagate Ecosystem Tier: Real-time, ML-based threat monitoring for up to 10 contracts on Base — plus 5 custom monitors for known threats for these contracts for free.

• Real-Time Alerts: Immediate notifications that can be forwarded through channels like Slack, Telegram, or email.

• Guidance and Support: Documentation and tutorials on setting up monitors, triage alerts, and responding to incidents.

Starting today, anyone can apply for the Hexagate Ecosystem Tier here — and for builders in need of more advanced features, Hexagate offers a full suite of services at a discounted fixed rate for the first year.

Building a more secure onchain future

We’re committed to fostering a secure and transparent environment for onchain builders, starting with access to smart contract monitoring and progressively rolling out more features, so that every app and protocol on Base can innovate with confidence. Apply for the Ecosystem Tier now.

***Please note that all services and tools are provided by Hexagate, and Coinbase and its affiliates make no guarantees and assume no liability for their use or performance.

Base is committed to building in the open, including public retrospectives to share learnings when issues arise.

On 09/21/2024 at 15:14 UTC, Base Mainnet experienced a 17 minute block building outage. The integrity of the chain was not affected, all funds on Base were safe, and block production resumed after we mitigated the incident. This retrospective dives into the root cause, the impact, how we mitigated, and what we plan to improve moving forward.

The root cause of the block building outage was a misconfiguration on our sequencer cluster. When the current block producer became unhealthy, it was unable to successfully start block building on another instance. The incident was mitigated by manually starting block production on a correctly configured instance.

Impact

Block Production

No blocks were produced for 17 minutes, beginning at 15:14 UTC. Blocks 20071146 to 20071691 contain no user transactions, as they were created by the protocol after sequencing resumed.

Transaction Processing

Transactions are submitted to Base through the `eth_sendRawTransaction` RPC call, which places them in the mempool. During the incident, the mempool instances continued to function correctly. However, fewer transactions were submitted in that time frame, which can be seen in the graph below.

There was an immediate drop in both successful and failed `eth_sendRawTransaction` requests after the outage started, followed by a slow rise in failed requests. Our current hypothesis is that less transactions were submitted because applications were impaired by the halt in block production.

Once block production resumed, many of the transactions that were submitted during the incident were included in the blocks immediately following 20071691.

Root Cause

Background

Over the past year, Base has designed and built op-conductor to improve the reliability of block production. Our goal with building op-conductor is to increase the overall availability of the system, with a target of achieving 99.99% availability. Prior to op-conductor, any failure of the sequencer would result in an outage. op-conductor enables us to operate multiple sequencers and upon a failure start block production on a healthy instance.

On 9/20/2024, we migrated block production from the single sequencer to the op-conductor cluster. However the op-conductor instances were in a misconfigured state, where op-node was not submitting new unsafe block payloads to op-conductor.

Trigger

On 9/21/2024 at 15:14 UTC, the currently active sequencer experienced delays in block production. op-conductor correctly detected the issue and began the process to transfer leadership to another instance. As part of the leadership transfer, op-conductor stopped the local op-node from building blocks.

Due to the misconfiguration, the new block producer was unable to start production as the start operation requires the unsafe payload from op-conductor, which the previous leader did not write. This caused the cluster to enter a state in which no instance was able to become an active block producer.

Below is a log snippet containing one sample of a failed leadership transfer:

Mitigation

The incident was mitigated by reverting to the single sequencer topology while the op-conductor cluster configuration was fixed.

What we’re fixing going forward

• We implemented a bidirectional handshake between op-node and op-conductor at startup to ensure proper communication configuration.

• Improve our internal configuration management process to prevent and detect misconfigurations.

Base’s mission is to increase innovation, creativity, and freedom, and we know we can't achieve this mission alone. This fall, we’re excited to meet with builders around the world.

To kick things off, we’re launching Base Around the World: a series of regional buildathons in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Following the buildathons, Jesse Pollak and the Base team will meet in person with builders in Nairobi, Bangalore, Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila, and virtually in Buenos Aires. Dates for each event will be announced soon.

We’re focused on these regions for two main reasons:

1. We’re seeing tremendous energy: Today, 74% of onchain builders live outside the US and these four regions are seeing some of the fastest growth in onchain adoption. In each, there are growing onchain use cases and talented builders who are solving hard problems. We want to connect, find opportunities to build together, and empower them with resources and support.

2. We can use onchain to solve problems in local contexts: Every community has different challenges and contexts where onchain technology can be useful. Building a better internet starts by local communities solving local challenges, in ways just now becoming possible. That’s why we are taking a local focus for these buildathons. We want to zero in on the use cases that will bring people benefits in their everyday lives.

Base Around the World: Africa, India, Latin America, and Southeast Asia

The buildathons will run in parallel from September 27 to October 13. There is one simple prompt: Build an onchain app that solves a challenge in your community, or use existing onchain tools to create real-world impact in your community by bringing them onchain.

If you’re looking for ideas, here are a few places to start:

• Help people come together, connect, and collaborate more easily — onchain or IRL

• Unlock access to social and educational resources

• Build tools that provide easier access to the onchain economy

• Create localized social or e-commerce apps

• Create platforms that empower creators to share their work (or, if you're a creator yourself, share your own)

• Make a blog, write a blog post, create a YouTube or TikTok video, or other content showing how you're making an impact and bringing your community onchain

Registration is now open on Devfolio:

• Based Africa

• Based Southeast Asia

• Based LatAm

• Based India

We’re excited to co-present the buildathons with local builders who are already driving impact in their communities.

Based Africa

Connecting builders from all corners of the continent and co-presented by Base Africa, Borderless Africa, Onboard and Yellow Card. Stay connected with builders across Africa on /base-africa on Warpcast and get support from Base Devel on #based-africa on the Base Discord.

Based Southeast Asia

Covering Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and co-presented by Base Southeast Asia, Yield Guild Games, Bitkub, and Coins.ph. Connect with builders across Southeast Asia on /base-sea on Base Warpcast, and join #based-sea on the Base Discord for dev support.

Based LatAm

Spanning Central and South America, from Mexico to Argentina, and co-presented by Base LatAm (powered by Odisea) and Buenbit. Meet builders across Latin America on /base-latam, and join #based-latam on Discord for buildathon questions and updates.

Based India

Focused on all of India and co-presented by Base India (powered by Farcaster Builders India), Levitate Labs, KGeN and Okto by CoinDCX. Get in touch with builders across India on /base-india, and join #based-india on Discord to get support building your product.

100 ETH in prizes

The Buildathon is open to anyone from these four regions. Each region will have a prize pool of 25 ETH (for a total of 100 ETH), with 2–8 winners selected from each region.

Each winner gets:

• Rewards: Winners receive between 3.125 and 12.5 ETH from Base, including contributions from Talent Protocol.

• Marketing & Distribution: All winners will be highlighted at a Base meetup event in-region with Jesse Pollak, and featured on Base social channels (X, Warpcast).

• Network: Connections with some of the most prolific Base builders in your region, with direct access to the Base team.

For the full set of rules, evaluation criteria, and to apply, visit the respective Devfolio pages for each Buildathon (Africa, Southeast Asia, LatAm, India).

Meet onchain, online and IRL

We can’t wait to meet builders in cities around the world this fall. Check out our event line-up and dates below:

• October 29, Buenos Aires (Jesse will dial in remotely)

• November 4, Nairobi

• November 7, Bangalore

• November 12, Bangkok

• November 18, Singapore

• November 20, Manila

If you can’t make it to any of these cities, you can apply to host a meetup to bring together builders in your community.

Join a local community on Warpcast, where there are 46 language channels—discover yours on baseworld.org. We’re grateful to all the global community members, particularly Atomo, Nathanael, Harry, Cheryl, Jitz, Kyle, Fer, Carlos, Joao, and Juampi, for making translations of this blog available in their local languages. (Check out translations in Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malay, Filipino, Spanish, and Portuguese here.)

Stay based. Keep building.

All buildathon-related matters, including payouts and logistics, are managed independently by Devfolio, subject to applicable laws and regulations.

Onchain Summer was a celebration and showcase of onchain music, art, food, gaming, and more — and after an incredible three months, the sun is setting and it has come to a close. Here’s a look back at some of the highlights that made it unforgettable this year.

We built

In June, we hosted the Onchain Summer Buildathon with Stripe, Shopify, Zora, Farcaster, Aerodrome, Fleek, Thirdweb, Nouns, Synthetix, and Bountycaster — resulting in the largest-ever onchain hackathon with:

• 7,500+ participating builders from around the world

• 1,250+ final projects submitted

• 300+ ETH in prizes for builders

• $200k+ USDC in bounties via Bountycaster

The Buildathon showcased how diverse the onchain economy is, with builders creating innovative projects across commerce, payments, gaming, creator, social, and more—including onchain checkout systems, interactive content feeds, social gaming experiences, new DeFi protocols, and more. For example, For The Children: July 2024 was awarded 2.22 ETH for bringing together 40+ artists and 30+ communities to sponsor and sign a collaborative digital artwork to raise money for children in the Dominican Republic.

We created

Throughout Onchain Summer, thousands of projects brought the world onchain through dead-simple, built-for-everyone onchain experiences spanning art, music, sports, gaming, beauty, food, loyalty, advocacy, in-person events, and so much more — with a variety of activations including:

• Atari brought arcade classics like Asteroids and Breakout onchain — distributing 40+ ETH in mint proceeds to the developers, artists, and builders behind each game.

• Doodles launched Doodlesᵗᵛ to give fans first access to music releases by Pharrell, limited-edition collectibles, and the premiere of ‘Dullsville and the Doodleverse’ — featuring artists like Lil Wayne, Lil Yachty, Coi Leray, Swae Lee, and Kyle Rich.

• Team Liquid launched a gaming tournament series with Community Gaming — distributing $20K USDC in rewards, paid directly onchain.

• Coinbase teamed up with renowned artist Daniel Arsham to celebrate 50 years of USA Basketball — with four digital collectibles representing the seasons of hard work required to build a championship team.

• Daylight debuted with an edition that gives holders perks and discounts — decentralizing the grid and bringing the energy industry onchain to improve access to cheap, reliable power for everyone.

With thousands of participating projects across 3 months, Onchain Summer resulted in:

• $5M+ in mint revenue for builders, creators, and projects

• 2M+ unique wallets participating in onchain experiences on Base, and 8x more than last Onchain Summer

• 24M+ onchain assets minted

We connected

Last August, Base made its debut from an unlikely launchpad: a remote Starlink setup in the mountains of Idyllwild, California. We went live surrounded by the energy of onchain creators, visionaries, and the mountains.

One year later, we came full circle by bringing BaseCamp to Idyllwild. This summer we gathered the Base community together to connect, look towards the onchain future, and work together to accelerate progress.

Designed to ignite the builder spirit, BaseCamp consisted of vision-setting, lightning talks, live performances, interactive art-making, delicious food, and bonding activities — centered around the BaseCamp Summit with talks from guests including the Coinbase team, ecosystem builders, and a special virtual appearance from Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. In case you missed it, watch the Basecamp Summit to learn about Coinbase’s vision to bring the world onchain.

We onboarded

This summer, we brought local businesses onchain with Coffee Days and onboarded a dozen coffee shops around the world to onchain payments. As part of Onchain Summer, anyone could mint a coffee NFT to sponsor coffee at one of the participating shops. Then, customers at those shops could get a free cup of coffee by getting onchain via Coinbase Wallet. The first cup of coffee is free, and participating shops also offer $1 coffee all summer long to anyone paying with USDC on Base.

Coffee Days brought onchain payments into the real world and showed customers and businesses how crypto can simplify and enhance everyday transactions. Paying for coffee onchain is fast and easy, and helps local businesses save money on fees. Sending USDC with Coinbase Wallet means instant settlement and no middlemen fees.

What's next

The sun is setting for Onchain Summer, but we’re excited to continue to spotlight onchain builders and creators year-round through Onchain Daily — our daily showcase of onchain creativity and innovation in the Base ecosystem. Coinbase Wallet will continue being a destination for people to discover onchain innovation — with new projects surfaced each day and features on Base’s X and Warpcast channels.

If you’re a creator, builder, or brand, we want to share what you’re building with millions of people across the world. Submit your apps, games, art, music, and dreams to the Onchain Registry for the chance to be featured across the Onchain Content Network. And if you want to create a feed or incorporate Onchain Daily content into your existing platform, learn how to integrate the Onchain Registry API.

Now, let’s keep bringing the world onchain

Onchain is better than it’s ever been before — with sub-cent transaction fees on Base, smart wallets to onboard people instantly, powerful social graphs that let you enter onchain apps with a fully-fledged identity, and so much more that makes it accessible for builders and users alike.

So keep building, creating, connecting, and dreaming.

Because summer never ends.

We’re showcasing our progress in this new blog series, Scaling Base, where we’ll share updates and our plan as we bring a billion people onchain. In this installment, we’re sharing our approach to increase data availability capacity as we look towards the integration of PeerDAS in the upcoming Pectra upgrade.

Scaling Base since launch

Ethereum introduced EIP-4844 in March of this year—an upgrade that resulted in a 100x reduction in L2 gas fees by decoupling them from Ethereum Mainnet fees. This decoupling is what allows the combined network to scale: If a Layer 2 gets congested, it can act independently to increase its target capacity and bring transaction fees back down.

As a result, we’ve scaled Base’s throughput by 4x since launching it a year ago, increasing the gas target per block from 2.5 Mgas/s to 10 Mgas/s to keep fees under one cent as activity grows. This has only been possible due to a huge amount of hard work from both the Base core team and the entire ecosystem of builders scaling the OP Stack, Ethereum clients, and the EVM.

Where we go from here: 1 Mgas/s increase per week

A few months ago, we set an ambitious goal: achieving 1 Ggas/s capacity for Base. We know that the journey to get there will require a lot of hard work and collaboration across many teams. Taking a step back, we realized that both for our internal team and for the broader ecosystem, the more predictability we can provide in our scaling journey, the easier it will be to plan and coordinate the necessary work.

To provide this clarity, we’re shifting the way we think about scaling Base: we are going to commit to an ongoing rate of gas target increase, then do the work to ensure we can achieve that increase by scaling across all the key properties.

To start, we are publicly committing to increasing the Base gas target by 1 Mgas/s each week, starting in late September. These increases will be subject to continued monitoring and testing—and if we need to change plans, we’ll communicate our key learnings and changes clearly. As we continue to scale the underlying infrastructure and build confidence, our goal is to then grow the rate of increase (e.g. 2 Mgas/s per week) to accelerate our progress towards 1 Ggas/s.

If you’re building on Base, or helping scale the infrastructure powering Base, our hope is that you can use this guidance as a north star for coordinating and planning your efforts. And if you have feedback on our approach, we’d love to hear it!

Pectra and PeerDAS

As Base continues to scale, we’re looking towards the Ethereum community to integrate the necessary mainnet upgrades to increase L1 data availability—ensuring that L2s can continue to bring the next billion users onchain.

For the past two years, we have collaborated with the Ethereum core developer community on this mission, beginning with EIP-4844. This upgrade—co-led by the Base team, OP Labs, and Ethereum Core Developers—significantly reduced costs on Base and other L2s by introducing blob space and providing a fixed amount of blob space for data availability.

But with increasing demand, our projections show that the current limits will not meet Base’s requirements in the coming year. This is where PeerDAS comes in.

PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling), a protocol change in the upcoming Pectra hard fork, addresses this by increasing total blob capacity without requiring every node to download every blob. It ensures Ethereum nodes can access all blob data while only downloading a fraction, significantly reducing network bandwidth requirements and unlocking substantial data availability capacity.

The Base core team has been actively working towards preparing PeerDAS for inclusion in the Pectra upgrade:

• We’re collaborating with ethPandaOps to conduct network analysis on PeerDAS devnets, providing essential data to inform recommendations.

• We’re contributing to the implementation within Prysm which is being used to drive the initial analyses.

PeerDAS blob capacity

Alongside these contributions, we’re advocating for a significant increase in blob capacity alongside activation of PeerDAS. This is crucial for scaling efforts, allowing more data to be processed without overloading individual nodes.

Any bandwidth-affecting protocol change should naturally face developer scrutiny, given the risks of introducing network instability and networking related denial-of-service attacks. Due to the complexity of PeerDAS, some have advocated for its inclusion while keeping the blob capacity unchanged at first. This approach would push any increase in data availability capacity to a subsequent upgrade, which could be many months (if not a year) after Pectra activates in 2025.

While the final details of PeerDAS are still being discussed, we believe its architecture allows for existing bandwidth-limited stakers to safely participate. Additionally, EIP-7251, also planned for Pectra, should reduce attestation and sync_committee p2p traffic, the main consumer of node bandwidth.

Imposing a higher minimum price for blob data

One argument against a capacity increase is that L1 nodes need to be fairly compensated for the compute, storage and bandwidth required for providing data availability. When demand for blobs is below target, prices fall to the bare minimum: 1 wei per byte of blob data. Demand exceeding target capacity allows for a market-based pricing mechanism to kick in, resulting in better recovery of the costs incurred on L1 nodes.

We think that addressing this problem by constraining DA capacity is a step in the wrong direction; instead, we suggest a different approach, ensuring a healthy market for blob space so that the network is fairly compensated while keeping it unconstrained. Some potential solutions are to raise minimum blob fees or implement a different fee mechanism for blob data.

Increasing the target to achieve positive-sum scaling

Post EIP-4844, L2 transaction fees will remain decoupled from Ethereum Mainnet fees as long as the average demand for blobs stays below the target (currently 3 per block).

So far, we've only seen a few instances where blob demand has exceeded this target for extended periods. Some may view below-target blob demand as a reason to proceed conservatively. However, with Base’s scaling plan and L2 demand growing, we expect the demand to consistently meet or exceed capacity within the coming months. Exceeding the target would end the decoupling of transaction fees—disallowing L2s to independently increase capacity and maintain low fees.

When data availability hits target capacity, scaling becomes a zero-sum game—one L2's increased throughput would negatively impact another. We aim to create a positive sum scaling environment. Implementing PeerDAS and increasing the blob count are crucial steps to achieving this goal.

L2 protocol improvements

L1 data availability can be indirectly scaled through L2 protocol improvements that reduce the required data. The OP Stack already features innovations like span batch data layout and Brotli compression from the Fjord upgrade, which improved Base’s data compression ratio by 25%. Future enhancements include stateful compression and aggregatable signatures for L2 transactions and UserOps. These improvements, while helpful, are the icing on the cake. Ultimately, the data availability capacity of mainnet must grow in order to support a healthy scaling roadmap.

Looking forward

As Ethereum continues to grow, any increase in data availability capacity will eventually be absorbed by organic demand. While a market-based pricing regime for data availability is inevitable, maintaining decoupled fees for as long as possible will allow Ethereum to scale more rapidly to its full potential.