Coinbase’s Base launches mainnet for builders, will onboard users in August

Base’s layer-2 mainnet has launched, allowing builders to deploy contracts, while users will be welcomed to the network in August.

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 opening the network to builders ahead of its public launch to allow more time for user onboarding. Base also announced that the public launch of the network will occur in August.

Since our testnet launch, we’ve connected with incredible builders and watched their projects thrive on Base.

Now it’s time to take the next step: Base mainnet is now open for builders.https://t.co/YvlQxquhvY

— Base ️ (@BuildOnBase) July 13, 2023

Coinbase announced the creation of the Base network on Feb 23. The team claimed that the network would be a layer-2 of Ethereum and would use the OP Stack software used by Optimism. The announcement was celebrated in the Ethereum community, as many users saw it as a ‘massive confidence vote’ for Ethereum.

In the team’s July 13 announcement, they stated that 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 these block explorers show the network has been running since July 2 and has processed over 1 million transactions.

*Base transactions as of July 13. Source: BaseScan block explorer.*

An official “OptimismPortal” or Base bridge contract has been deployed to Ethereum, blockchain data shows. According to the team, this contract allows developers to transfer Ether (ETH) to the new network to pay gas fees. However, the bridge does not have a web-based user interface, so its functions can only be called via a command-line interface or by running scripts.

The team stated “there will not be a publicly available bridge UI [user interface]” during the initial “builder” phase, as this feature is being saved for the upcoming public launch, and they’ve asked developers to refrain from launching UIs for their own apps until then.

The team is allowing builders to mint a “Base is for builders” commemorative nonfungible token (NFT) in honor of the event, and is also giving away a “Genesis Builder NFT” to any developer that deploys their contracts to the network and fills out a form on the project’s website.

Optimism Labs, creator of the OP Stack, has claimed that Base and Optimism will eventually form a “Superchain” of multiple networks that share the same security features. The Superchain will likely face competition from zkSync’s “Hyperchains,” which are being developed to have many of the same features as the Superchain.