Top crypto exchange Coinbase just announced its Base blockchain is ready to be expanded to the public. On August 9th, Base Mainnet, a layer 2 blockchain network incubated by Coinbase, will launch along with ‘Onchain Summer,’ a month-long festival of events celebrating on-chain art, gaming, music, and more.
For the launch, Coinbase has collaborated with over 50 platforms, brands, builders, artists, and marketplaces in the space with the collective aim of bringing Web3 to the masses. Over the next week, new dapps will be launched and existing ones on the on-chain ecosystem will turn on Base support, enabling near-zero gas fees.
Coinbase is inviting creators to participate in the event for the chance to win grants from PropHouse. According to the press release, some of the grants and themes include:
- Onchain Summer (August 9th-18th). Creators are invited to make art, a website, or other projects inspired by Onchain Summer on Base.
- Build on Base (August 12th-23rd. Developers are invited to build infrastructure or deploy an app or protocol.
- Stand with Crypto (August 14th-24th). Anyone in the space can share a story about on-chain use cases or advocating for legislation in Web3 with a 1-minute video.
- Based Accounts (August 16th – September 13th). Innovators are invited to build something new or that improves the user experience on Base using account abstraction.
In collaboration with Superchain members, a virtual hackathon called Superhack is also being held between August 14th and 18th, with $125,000 in prizes.
There are several ways for folks who wish to participate in Onchain Summer and the launch of Base Mainnet. To bridge to Base, users need a crypto wallet with ETH. Then they can bridge to Base by:
- Minting the commemorative Bridge to Base NFT on onchainsumer.xyx
- Minting a commemorative NFT on bridge.base.org
- Completing quests on Coinbase to learn about Base, bridge ETH, and mint a commemorative NFT
Users can also learn more about and bridge to Base with Galxe, Layer3, mint.fun — and any crypto wallet including Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet, Rainbow, Rabby, and many more.
What is Coinbase’s ‘Base’ Exactly?
On February 24th, Coinbase grabbed Web3 headlines when it announced the launch of the testnet of Base, a layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum built using Optimism’s OP stack. The L2 blockchain lets users onramp onto Base from Coinbase, Solana, Ethereum, and other interoperable blockchains.
As a result, according to Will Robinson, the VP of Engineering at Coinbase, now “anyone, anywhere” can build decentralized apps on-chain. Here are some of the features about the new blockchain:
- It gives developers access to Coinbase’s tools, users, and products for building dApps
- It allows developers the ability to integrate products with Base
- It provides easy fiat on-ramps
- It’s secure and scalable for powering dApps using Ethereum as the underlying blockchain
- It lets developers create gasless transactions for their dApps
Over time, Base aims to be decentralized and permissionless, and because of its design to provide easy access to multiple blockchains, it could be a major onboarding ramp to the crypto ecosystem.
For now, the latest news about Base’s public launch and Onchain Summer is stirring up excitement in the space. At Rarity Sniper, we’ll report back as the story develops.
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