On February 23, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced the launch of Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network. The company claimed that this new network will offer a low-cost, secure, and easy-to-develop environment for creating decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain.
According to Coinbase, Base is designed to be a bridge for users in the crypto economy, offering access to other L1 ecosystems like Solana and making it interoperable with other chains.. It will also provide access to Coinbase products, users and tools, as well as easy fiat on-ramps and powerful acquisition tools. The company does not plan to issue a new network token.
1/ We’re excited to announce @BuildOnBase.
Base is an Ethereum L2 that offers a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps.
Our goal with Base is to make onchain the next online and onboard 1B+ users into the cryptoeconomy. pic.twitter.com/RmwZFJzGGs
—Coinbase (@coinbase) February 23, 2023
1/ We are pleased to announce @BuildOnBase.
Base is an Ethereum L2 offering a secure, low-cost, and easy-to-use way for anyone, anywhere to build decentralized applications.
Our goal with Base is to chain the next 1B+ users online and embedded in the crypto economy.
Base will be built on top of the “OP Stack” used by Optimism. It will start out very centralized, although Coinbase has released a detailed plan for how the network will decentralize over time.
In its blog announcement, Coinbase said that Base will be “fully open source and freely accessible.” The company said it is joining the OP Stack core development team to “ensure that it is a public good available to everyone.”
According to the announcementCoinbase will continue to integrate as an exchange with other networks, and Base itself will be “a bridge, not an island”. Coinbase wants Base to be an easy-to-use network for its customers to get familiar with using cryptocurrency. But Coinbase will encourage users to “start at Base, but go everywhere.”
In his decentralization plan, Coinbase said it is working with Op Labs and the Optimism Collective to decentralize the Optimism ecosystem by creating a “Superchain” of connection networks built on top of the OP Stack. The company judges the current version of Optimism to be a “stage 0 rollup”, citing Vitalik Buterin’s post on decentralizing rollups. By the end of 2023, Coinbase said that it plans to have progressed Base to “Stage 1.”
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