Coinbase Launches An Ethereum Layer 2 Blockchain, But No Token Included

Coinbase, the crypto exchange giant, has officially jumped into the L2 game. They announced Base, an Ethereum L2 that offers a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone to build decentralized apps. They aim to make "on-chain" the next "online" and onboard the next billion to crypto.

“Our goal with Base is to launch a platform that makes it really easy for developers to build apps that users actually want to use and then plug that into the Coinbase product suite to make it really easy for users to use those apps,”  Jesse Pollack the senior director of engineering of Coinbase said.

The tease

This news was first teased with Coinbase Tweeting a video of a single blue circle emoji which got followers to speculate huge news is about to drop on the date stated in the video.

While many were sceptical about the news, many did not think much of it following multiple DeFi protocols on Ethereum posting hand emojis a few weeks ago hinting at huge partnership news, but it turned out short on expectations.

Even when Optimism tweeted this image below, with the exact blue emoji that Coinbase had in their video, crypto Twitter was still unclear and could not figure out their possible collaboration.

https://twitter.com/optimismFND/status/1628453268673163268

However, this was all made clear when the news of what Base is came out. In their recent tweet, the Base network was summarized as "secured by Ethereum, empowered by Coinbase and open sourced with Optimism".

It will be an ecosystem where anyone, anywhere, can build dapps that will bring in the next wave of mass adoption. It will resemble a bridge that brings users on-chain and enables them to go anywhere, including any L1s, L2s and ecosystems we know today.

There are building an ecosystem for ecosystems, much similar to what Cosmos is doing with Networks, but I believe this is on a much bigger scale.

Being built on the Optimism stack

Optimism is one of the top Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum. Similarly to Arbitrum, Optimism uses Optimistic Rollups to increase transaction throughput and reduce gas fees. 

It also enables developers to create scalable and efficient applications on top of Ethereum, which can benefit from the network's existing infrastructure. The collaboration with Base will strive to upgrade Optimism Mainnet and other L2s into a superchain by making Base and other chains running on the OP stack incredibly low-cost, decentralized and secure.

https://twitter.com/Route2FI/status/1628838344724471808

Since the news release, the native token for Optimism, $OP, is up 8.75% on the week from a low of $2.36 to its current price of $3.01.

Among existing dapps, CAP finance and Parallel announced their intention to build on Base. Undoubtedly, there will be more to follow.

Closing thoughts

Apart from building an infrastructure to garner a mass audience, I found something rare in the current crypto environment. They decided not to include a native token but instead utilize $ETH for gas. This signals a positive step towards a fully decentralized world.

Apart from value accrual to the Ethereum ecosystem, the sky is the only limit for Base. The idea of multiple chains and networks coexisting in one massive infrastructure is not new. Still, it will pose a huge disruptor with existing interoperable networks in the market.

Also read How China Will Trigger The Next Crypto Bull Run

[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your research before investing.]

Featured Image Credit: ChainDebrief