An article explaining Base’s vision, advantages, and value proposition
Base is a tech company that aims to revolutionize business operations. We empower organizations with tools to streamline processes, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. Our platform offers automation, communication, and data analytics features to save time and money. It centralizes communication and automates repetitive tasks to improve efficiency. By integrating with existing systems, Base is customizable and scalable. Businesses can achieve their goals faster and more efficiently with us.
Since our testnet launch, DApp and community members have been asking how to support bringing new products into the Base ecosystem. Many DApps, especially those governed by DAOs, require a formal governance process to deploy on Base. Writing a proposal is the first step in helping community members make decentralized decisions.
Base has an ambitious vision: to onboard the next billion users onto-chain. To achieve this, we need support and collaboration from the entire industry. We appreciate community members who share our vision. To support them in this critical work, this guide provides a detailed introduction to the reasons, content, and methods of bringing a DApp or protocol into Base.
If you’re considering writing a governance proposal, we encourage you to interact with the community and confirm that you’re the right person to submit the proposal before getting started. Successful proposals will be the result of thoughtful and careful consensus building, which requires trusted members of the community to complete. It’s worth confirming with the community whether anyone is already doing similar work. When writing proposals, you can start with the language or content in this guide and refer to proposals written by other authors:
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[Uniswap] Deploy Uniswap v3 on Base
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[Aave] Aave V3 Deployment on Base
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[Moonwell] MIP-39: Activate Moonwell on Base Mainnet
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[Balancer] Deploy Balancer to Base
Note: Coinbase does not endorse, support, or promote third-party governance proposals. The above links are for informational purposes only.
Overview
Base is a Layer 2 (L2) solution that aims to be secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly, making building easy. It’s built on the open-source OP Stack. While incubated at Coinbase, Base’s goal is to gradually decentralize and become a permissionless, open ecosystem where anyone can build or participate.
We, as the second core developer team of the OP Stack, have joined the Optimism team and will continue to work with them to pursue the vision of a “superchain” that scales Ethereum.
Base is currently in the testnet phase, and over the past three months, we’ve seen amazing progress from builders:
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In the first week of the Base testnet, approximately 18,000 developers deployed 55,000 smart contracts.
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The “Base, Introduced” NFT (non-fungible token) issued to commemorate our testnet launch had a circulation of approximately 485,000 tokens.
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During the Base Builder Quest event, 1.1 million wallets deployed smart contracts on Base to mint commemorative NFTs.
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Authors can refer to BaseScan and Base Blockscout, as well as dashboards from analytics providers like Flipside.
Why Protocols Should Consider Deploying on Base
By deploying on Base, protocols can increase their user base while helping to build a richer on-chain economy.
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Expand User Base
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Move Towards a Multi-Chain Vision
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Help Create a More Vibrant and Permissionless Ecosystem
Access to Users and Assets in the Coinbase Ecosystem
Coinbase serves customers in over 100 countries, and we expect more and more users will enter the on-chain ecosystem as the dapp ecosystem matures. We want to create a win-win situation for users and builders developing in the on-chain economy. By deploying on Base, protocols can reach users in the Coinbase ecosystem. In turn, users will be able to experience a diverse range of dapps.
Author’s Note: To learn more about the history, background, and philosophy behind our decision to build Base, please see our blog. For the latest financial information, please see our investor relations website.
Building Towards a Multi-Chain Vision and Reaching a Diverse Audience on-Chain
We believe the future of the on-chain world will be made up of multiple interoperable and co-extendable chains. Base is built on Optimism’s OP Stack and aims to build a standardized, modular, Rollup-agnostic superchain – an integrated network of chains that extends Ethereum – to ultimately provide users with a unified, seamless experience. Many protocols share this multi-chain vision and see interoperability as crucial. By building on Base, protocols can easily integrate with the eventual superchain and interact with users on multiple chains.
Author’s Note: To learn more about our collaboration with Optimism, please see our blog post. For more information on the superchain, please see this article.
Promoting a More Vibrant Decentralized and Permissionless Ecosystem
Base is aligned with the values of decentralization and permissionlessness that underpin Ethereum and the broader crypto economy. We are involved as the second core developer of the OP Stack and contribute resources to improve the infrastructure, accelerating on-chain adoption across the entire ecosystem.
Author’s Note: We will be sharing more information soon about our mainnet timeline, but encourage authors to continue engaging in early governance processes like RFCs and temperature checks as we approach mainnet. For the latest updates on our release plans, please refer to our Twitter, blog, and Discord.
Key Value Proposition and Core Principles
Base is an important part of Coinbase’s “secret master plan” and will be the platform for building the next generation of dapps that provide value and utility to customers.
Base is built by Coinbase’s builders for developers worldwide and draws on Coinbase’s ten years of experience building crypto products.
Base will serve as the home for Coinbase’s on-chain products and an open ecosystem where anyone can build. Our goal is to support Coinbase’s on-chain products and leading dapps in various verticals with a rich, intuitive on-chain experience on day one of mainnet launch.
We recently shared our mainnet standards and will share more information in the coming days. Meanwhile, any developer can deploy on the Base testnet, and relevant documentation can be found at docs.base.org.
Key Value Propositions
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Security based on Ethereum: Base has the security and scalability needed to build decentralized applications. It leverages Ethereum’s underlying security and Coinbase’s best practices to confidently enter Base from Coinbase, Ethereum L1, and other interoperable chains.
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Coinbase authorization: Base makes it easy to build decentralized applications and access Coinbase’s products, users, and tools. Seamless Coinbase product integration, simple fiat on-ramps, and powerful acquisition tools allow developers to join the Coinbase ecosystem.
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More functionality, less cost: Base offers full EVM compatibility for a fraction of the cost and is committed to advancing the developer platform. The protocol can set up gasless transactions for dapps and securely build multi-chain apps with easy-to-use bridging tools.
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Open source: The foundational software for the global crypto economy should be fully open source and free. Base is built on the MIT-licensed OP Stack and developed in partnership with Optimism. It is open to anyone with a vision to create a standardized, modular, Rollup-agnostic superchain driven by Optimism. Base and Optimism are working together to create a vibrant developer community. The toolkit is an open platform that anyone can contribute to, fork, and extend to help scale the crypto economy. Learn more about how Base is working with Optimism.
Core Principles
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Bridges, not islands: Base is designed to provide convenient, secure access to Ethereum L1, other L2s, and other L1 ecosystems. Coinbase encourages its customers to start with Base and explore beyond Base: Base is the “bridge” for users to enter the crypto ecosystem. It is an easy-to-use default on-chain experience that provides access to products on other chains. In addition to interoperating Base with other chains, Coinbase will continue to support as many chains as possible in its products.
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Decentralized and open source: Decentralization is critical to maintaining openness, globalization, and accessibility in the crypto economy. Although Base was initially incubated within Coinbase, the team is deeply committed to developing towards full decentralization in the years to come. With the support of Coinbase’s OP Stack to provide additional resources, Base plans to progress from Stage 0 to Stage 1 Rollup by 2023 and to Stage 2 Rollup by 2024. Learn more about Base’s decentralized approach.
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For everyone: Base’s vision is to become an open ecosystem powered by Coinbase’s products, users, and assets. Base will work with the broader community to drive chain activity. This is the first day of Base’s journey, and the team is extremely excited about the incredible community they have already built with them.
During the testnet launch, we received a lot of interest from developers deploying on Base. We are excited to support these teams and many other developers in building with us.
Author’s Tip: For more on our philosophy and background, check out our blog post.
Default Bridging Information: L1<>L2 Communication
The Base network reuses Optimism’s native Bedrock bridging without modification. This bridge implementation has been audited by both Optimism and Base and is now responsible for protecting billions of dollars of TVL on the Optimism mainnet.
From L1 to L2:
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Users can send any message from L1 to L2
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Users call a bridging contract on L1
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The bridging contract sends the message to L2, which is included in the L2 block by the Base sequencer (responsible for building L2 blocks)
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The sequencer must include the L1 message on L2 within a certain time window
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After the time window has passed, decentralized validation nodes will automatically include the L1 message
From L2 to L1:
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Users call the bridging contract on L2
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The L2 state Trie root hash is submitted to the smart contract on L1 by the sequencer (used to prove the L2 state)
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The user’s transaction will enter a pending state, called the challenge window
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During the challenge window, state submissions can be removed if necessary
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Once the fraud proof is pushed out, anyone can challenge the state submission
Between different L2s:
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We are working on interoperability standards between L2s and will update the community as progress is made. For now, please refer to the “Low Latency L2-to-L2 Messaging” section in Optimism’s Superchain Explainer.
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In the meantime, you can transfer funds between L2s through our native bridging or third-party bridging (e.g., Optimism <> Base).
Both Base and Optimism are committed to realizing a decentralized vision, including the rollout of fraud proofs and decentralized L2 state root submissions, which will allow users to withdraw funds from L2 in the event of sequencer failure.
Fraud Proofs and Decentralization
At launch, Base will operate the same codebase as the OP mainnet, so fraud proofs will not be available. We are working with OP Labs to reinforce the security guarantees of Bedrock and accelerate the timeline for the rollout of decentralized fraud proofs on the OP stack. You can learn more about our plans in our Decentralization Roadmap Overview, and we will share more updates through our blog in the coming months.
Our Vision for the Future
We are incredibly excited to bring the next billion users together with dapps and communities who share our vision on-chain. We want to support developers in the ecosystem and ensure that the cryptoeconomy remains open, permissionless, decentralized, and accessible to all.
We believe that on-chain is the next frontier for the internet and are working hard to realize that vision. We can’t wait for you to be a part of this journey.
