On 2/23/23, we launched the testnet of Base, a new L2 blockchain incubated by Coinbase that offers developers a secure, low-cost, and easy way to build dapps to bring the next billion users onchain.
In the month since launch, we’ve been so thankful for the incredible ecosystem of builders that are building on or supporting Base.
We’re dedicating this post to the Base community by sharing some of our favorite highlights.
A blue dot becomes an avalanche
24 hours before the launch, Coinbase tweeted a mysterious 🔵 to tease that something big was in the works. Base collaborators, ecosystem players, and the community at large amplified the message until curiosity about the origins of 🔵 took Twitter by storm.
The world met Base the next day. And what started with curiosity and conversation has turned into an incredible group of builders on Base.
‘Base, Introduced’
Base is for everyone. To make everyone part of the celebration, we dropped ‘Base, Introduced” – a commemorative NFT collection minted on Zora that became one of the largest open-edition Ethereum collections, with over 485K editions minted and 368K unique holders.
‘Base, Introduced’ has inspired other ‘Introduced’ NFTs in the community like the recent Safe{Core}, Introduced NFT.
ETHDenver
We brought the entire Base team to ETHDenver, with a single goal: help folks understand why we’re building Base and how they can get involved. It was an incredible week.
Home Base, our hacker house, hosted more than 5,500 people through the course of the week. And we took 145 polaroids with builders for our wall, every single one signifying a commitment from a team to build on Base.
Beyond just commitments, we were blown away by the 60 teams who built on Base during the hackathon and the quality of the hackathon submissions. We recently announced the winners:
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Decent AI, which creates a decentralized marketplace for running AI models based on mutual incentives, was the winning team.
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Rhinestone, the first modular implementation of account abstraction (ERC-4337) using (modified) diamond proxies, took the second place.
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Inheritable, a web3 Will solution for secure, decentralized inheritance that is Anchored on Base and powered by Weavechain, took the third place.
If you couldn’t make it to ETHDenver, you can still participate in the experience. We gave a number of talks — check them out:
Did you visit or meet us at ETHDenver? Subscribe to mint the commemorative NFT.
Shout out to the Base community
Base is first and foremost for builders. In the first week of Base, 18K developers deployed 55K smart contracts on testnet. Each contributing builder makes Base a stronger developer ecosystem and paves the way for an onchain economy with diverse use cases. We’re excited to work with our growing community of builders to bring next billion users onchain, together.
Looking ahead
Ultimately, what made the launch of Base a success were the values that guided us here: Base is for everyone, leading us to work with an incredible community of ecosystem builders toward a common goal. Base is decentralized and open source, pushing us to welcome our community to be part of the storytelling and celebration. Base is a bridge, not an island, pushing us to work with the community to make Base deeply interconnected to the broader ecosystem.
We are grateful for your support of our testnet and excited to keep supporting each of you in building. And we’re excited to work together to bring Base to mainnet in the months ahead.