Optimism Crypto: Coinbase Launches Mainnet for Builders

Coinbase’s Base Mainnet is Open for Builders

Coinbase’s Base mainnet is now “open for builders,” according to a July 13 blog post from the network’s development team. The team is allowing more time for user onboarding ahead of the public launch of the network, which is expected to occur in August.

The Base network was first announced on Feb. 23 and is built on Ethereum’s layer-2, using Optimism’s OP Stack software. The news was welcomed by the Ethereum community as a “massive confidence vote” for the crypto.

The July 13 announcement stated that the Base mainnet now has two functioning block explorers and an official RPC node that can be used to read data and transmit transactions. Data from the block explorers reveals that the network has been running since July 2, processing over 1 million transactions.

Additionally, the team has deployed an official “OptimismPortal”, or Base bridge contract, to Ethereum. This contract enables developers to transfer Ether (ETH) to the new network to pay gas fees, however, it does not have a web-based user interface (UI) and can only be called via a command-line interface or by running scripts.

Upcoming Crypto and Web 3.0 Apps

The team has informed developers that there won’t be a publicly accessible bridge with a UI during the initial “builder” phase, and has asked them to wait until the public launch before launching their own UIs for their apps. To mark the occasion, builders are able to mint a “Base is for builders” commemorative nonfungible token (NFT) and developers that deploy a contract to the network and fill out a form on the project’s website will receive a “Genesis Builder NFT”.

Optimism Labs, the creator of the OP Stack, has declared that Base and Optimism will eventually form a “Superchain” with the same security features as many networks. This Superchain will face competition from zkSync’s “Hyperchains,” which have been designed to have similar features.