Base feels like it's everywhere right now.

Collect a song - it's on Base.

Publish a blog - it's on Base.

Try a Farcaster Frame - it's on Base.

New meme coin trending? It's on Base.

Base only launched in August last year but the layer 2 blockchain is quietly gaining share across the culture and consumer crypto landscape.

So, what exactly is it? Lets go deep and explore the Base ecosystem.

WTF is Base?

Base is a layer 2 blockchain incubated by a team at Coinbase. It launched in summer 2023 with the goal of bringing a billion people onchain.

To understand what that means, let's take a few steps back.

Think of web3 like a new planet where there's a whole world of apps, games, music, casino, art and marketplaces to play with.

Coinbase is the rocket that takes you there. It's the place you buy your first crypto, then you hop off onto the Ethereum blockchain or Solana blockchain to explore the new world.

Until now, Coinbase was just the entry point. Now, with Base, they're also building the infrastructure across this new planet — like a high-speed rail network connecting different parts of the world, and it's setting up to be incredibly important to our future of music, culture and commerce onchain.

To be more specific...

Base is an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain where developers can build anything from web3 social apps, onchain music platforms, art, nft avatars, communities and trading.

Wait, what's a layer 2? Layer 2s are fast lanes built on top of Ethereum designed to make it quicker and cheaper to interact with. In simple terms, they bundle up lots of transactions and settle them on Ethereum later in batches.

It makes it 10x faster and cheaper to do stuff onchain.

This is a game-changer for reaching everyday people and bringing them into crypto. Even a year ago, it cost $10 in transaction fees just to collect music onchain. Now it's often completely free and instant.

Now Base is picking up speed.

The number of developers building here is going up faster than any other blockchain ecosystem.

Total users, value locked and revenue accrued are also driving higher.

How many L2s do we need?

There are dozens of layer twos, all with different priorities, features and culture.

For example, Arbitrum is specialized in gaming. Optimism is rooted in culture like art and music.

Polygon uses completely different technology and went after big partnerships with companies like Starbucks. Some platforms built their own Layer 2, like Zora, which created Zora Chain.

The future will be built on lots of different layer 2s, all optimised for different use-cases. But all aligned on scaling Ethereum.

BASE is built on Optimism

Base shares most of its technology and culture with Optimism.

It’s built on the OP stack. An open source code-base built by the Optimism Foundation.

Base also sends a portion of its total revenue to the Optimism Collective, which is then used to fund grants. 

The Superchain

Together Optimism and Base subscribe to this idea of a Superchain — a future where L2s all work together to scale Ethereum. 

BASE is eating everything

Since launching in August 2023, BASE has partnered with hundreds of apps and you can FEEL its presence growing across the culture side of crypto.

It’s literally gobbling up mind-share, liquidity and users as it partners with more and more apps.

There’s an energy behind it.

The Farcaster effect

This month really showed why Base is gathering mindshare so quickly.

A crypto social app called Farcaster started blowing up with activity. The Base team were instantly on top of it. They hosted hackathons over a weekend to bring developers together and launched grants for building on Farcaster. They ordered pizzas for everyone, started group chats and signal-boosted the best developments.

Two weeks later, Base is now responsible for two-thirds of transactions across the app.

The team is fast, scrappy and deep within the crypto-native culture.

Wait … isn’t it a bit too close to Coinbase?

We should pause for a second and ask ourselves if our new onchain world should be built by a small team in the Coinbase office. After all, Coinbase is a publicly-traded company with immense power and resources to exert control… if it wanted to.

Although we should stay cautious and ask questions, so far all signs point to a team committed to decentralising. 

First, they built the entire ecosystem on the open source OP Stack. They could have built a closed, centralised blockchain like Binance Chain.

They’re contributing to public goods funding and they have a decentralised private key structure so that no single entity can make changes to the network. Over time, they plan to shift more and more control to the community. 

It’s obviously on us to hold projects like Base accountable and get involved with governance.

The BASE ecosystem

So… what can you do in this onchain world?

Let’s start with music as that’s our sweet spot.

Music

sound.xyz - Sound is the main home of onchain music where artists can sell songs in limited editions. They added support for BASE in November last year and it’s now become the default chain on the platform.

Catalog Radio - Catalog is the home of rare music 1/1s and a “crate digging” experience. They recently launched a 24/7 radio feature and new, accessible form of minting called “cosigns.” Cosigns are exclusively built on BASE.

Anotherblock - Initially best-known for tokenizing streaming royalties, Anotherblock recently started launching music collectibles, powered by Base.

Zora - Although Zora has its own Layer 2, it also supports minting on Base.

Royal - The music rights platform founded by 3LAU just launched a new AI model with minting powered by Base.

Bonfire - Bonfire is the web3 website builder of choice for artists. They recently launched membership passes using Base.

Manifold - The extremely flexible minting protocol Manifold also supports Base.

Social

Farcaster - Web3 social platform of the moment Farcaster is built on Optimism, but transactions within the app are overwhelmingly taking place on Base, most likely due to the team's involvement in the explosion of Frames.

Friend.tech - The much-hyped social-fi app where you can "bet" on your friends originally caught traction during "Onchain summer" when Base first launched. Activity has died since then but a pending airdrop may pick things back up.

Unlonely - Unlonely is a live streaming app where you can mint highlights of popular livestreams.

Builder.fi - A social app where builders can earn crypto for answering questions.

MOAR Minting

Mint.fun - A platform that aggregates trending mints from Zora and various other platforms.

Fabric - A growing nft subscription platform. You can subscribe to artists for one month, two months or more on a recurring basis. It's built on Base by default.

Coinvise - A no-code platform for creating NFT drops, membership passes and community drops.

Highlight - A generative art platform.

Publishing

Paragraph - This platform! Built on Base by default.

Mirror - Recently added support for Base.

DAOs

Tally - decentralized tooling for DAOs.

XDAO - Easily create your own DAO.

Llama - for onchain governance.

Based Nouns - A NounsDAO derivative created on Base.

And so much more...

There are, of course, hundreds more apps across gaming, defi and culture but the ones listed above are the most useful for creatives onchain. You can see the full list at Base.org.

Meme coins

Lastly, if you got all the way to the end here's a little info on BASE memcoins.

$DEGEN - $DEGEN launched in January 2024 and was airdropped to members of the "degen" Farcaster channel. Farcaster users often tip each other with $DEGEN for posting good content.

$BALD - $BALD launched just after Base went live (a reference to Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong who is ... bald).

$POINTS - $POINTS dropped as a meme during the hype frenzy around platforms launching points systems.

(Not financial advice, obviously).

Thanks for reading! This is our first post on Paragraph and is collectible ... on Base.