Great ideas fail because of bad timing all the time. I am confident that now is the time for Base Colors. The more I work on it, the more I feel that way. Here are a few reasons why (references to the ages of certain products and technologies are based on the date of Base Colors' launch):
Base is 1 year old. Base Colors would have been impractical to build on a relatively high-fee blockchain like Ethereum. The initial mint price per color needed to be low due to the high supply, and it does not make sense to pay a transaction fee that may be 10x the cost of the color itself. Layer 2 blockchains (L2s) as a scaling solution built on top of Ethereum helped solve this problem by making transacting fast and cheap. Some of these solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum have been around for a few years, but Base Colors is betting on Base to be the leading L2 in the long run. By launching roughly two months before Base's one-year anniversary, we were able to see the early traction and market leadership to add conviction to our confidence in Base in the long run, and yet we did not wait too long to make this bet, as we believe it is still incredibly early.
Coinbase Smart Wallet is 1 month old. Base Colors is well suited to be the most widely appealing collection in crypto because colors are more widely appealing than any more specific piece of art. Not everyone likes [insert animal] or [insert style], but everyone has a favorite color, and most people have many that they like and which are meaningful to them, for one reason or another. Because colors are so universally appealing, we feel a responsibility to make Base Colors as universally accessible as possible, so that anyone who wants to get involved, can get involved. The two primary constraints on accessibility are affordability and user experience. Affordability is easy. We set an initial mint price of .001 ETH (~$3 at launch) so that anyone can afford one color. Creating a universally accessible user experience in crypto is the trickier part. This is why the launch of Coinbase Smart Wallet was so important. Coinbase Smart Wallet is the first wallet that is easy enough for people who have never done anything in crypto before to create without any help, and they can do so in a matter of seconds. Thanks to Coinbase Smart Wallet, Base Colors was able to launch in a way that allows anyone to create a wallet, buy colors, and name colors. We believe it is one of the most universally appealing, affordable, and accessible projects in crypto.
Crossmint, Linkdrop, and other helpful companies already exist. These companies are as new as Base or Coinbase Smart Wallet, but the fact that they exist significantly helps our ability to create a great experience for Base Colors owners. Crossmint allowed us to offer "pay with credit card" which is a critical addition to the first time user flow as they would otherwise need to fund their newly created Coinbase Smart Wallet with crypto, a non-trivial task for a non-crypto native which in and of itself is more difficult than simply buying a color with credit card after creating the wallet. Linkdrop allowed us to enable the easy gifting of colors, one of the most highly requested features that became obvious to add immediately after launch. Base Colors make great gifts, and with Linkdrop's help we enabled Base Colors owners to send colors as gifts via simple links which recipients can simply click to accept their gift. As far as we know, Base Colors was the first to enable the sending of NFTs via links in this way, and we could not have done it without Linkdrop.
More generally, due to the existence of the technologies listed above and many others alike, 2024 feels like an inflection point. It feels like all of the infrastructure exists where crypto is finally ready to go mainstream via the mass adoption of some killer apps. Base Colors intends to be one of them.
