Intro Guide: Base Ecosystem

Published in

3x Capital

4 min readMay 2, 2024

🔵Base, a Layer-2 blockchain solution developed by Coinbase, harnesses the OP Stack from Optimism for enhanced performance. Launched in August 2023 with over 100 dApps and service providers, Base offers near-zero gas fees, rapid transactions, and robust security underpinned by Ethereum’s strength.

🏛️Internally incubated by Coinbase with a decade of crypto product expertise, Base aims to transition towards decentralization over time. The goal is to become decentralized, permissionless, and accessible to all. Utilizing the OP Stack, Base aligns with the vision of a modular, optimistic rollup agnostic superchain, facilitating seamless asset movement across chains.

🏦Base has successfully raised over $600 million through multiple rounds of fundraising, with significant backing from Coinbase. Currently, Base has established an ecosystem fund, which is actively deploying capital to support projects built on top of its solutions.

Base Up-to-Date Stats

Base has solidified its position as the leading Layer-2 (L2) solution on the Ethereum network in terms of activity, boasting an impressive throughput of 27 transactions per second on average (ex. Arbitrum — 20 TPS, Ethereum Mainnet — 13 TPS, zkSync — 11 TPS). This achievement underscores Base’s effectiveness in handling high transaction volumes efficiently and underscores its viability as a scalable solution for decentralized applications (dApps) seeking to leverage Ethereum’s ecosystem while mitigating congestion and high gas fees. As Base continues to optimize its infrastructure and expand its user base, its role in enhancing Ethereum’s scalability and usability becomes increasingly prominent.

Base Ecosystem

❗️Before starting any activity on Base, we recommend taking a look at our EVM ecosystem introduction guide, where we cover the vitals of EVM navigation.

Bridges

🕳️Wormhole — a leading cross-chain solution that facilitates the transfer of assets and data across blockchain ecosystems.

✴️Stargate Finance — a liquidity transport protocol that lives at the heart of Omnichain DeFi developed by LayerZero. It has 15 chains supported and is the most convenient for users with the highest amount of assets supported.

🛰️Base Bridge — enables the transfer of certain digital assets and other data back and forth between Ethereum and Base.

🦏Rhino Finance — bridge for seamless cross-chain transactions, which supports the biggest L2 chains. It combines bridge and swap in one platform offering relatively low transaction costs.

🧙Merkly — a multifunctional Omnichain platform, designed to simplify bridging via groundbreaking interoperability technology powered by L0.

DeFi

🦄Uniswap — it is one of the leading DEXes in the space with a variety of assets to trade. Offers a convenient experience and moderate transaction fees.

🔵Base Swap — the premier DEX on Base Chain. Crafted by a Based team, for a Based community. From simple to sophisticated, BaseSwap offers it al

👻Aave — an Open Source Protocol to create Non-Custodial Liquidity Markets to earn interest on supplying and borrowing assets.

🐮Beefy — a Decentralized, Multichain Yield Optimizer that allows its users to earn compound interest on their crypto holdings. Beefy earns you the highest APYs with safety and efficiency in mind.

Social

👾Farcaster — is a public social network similar to Twitter and Reddit. Users can create profiles, post “casts” and follow others. They own their accounts and relationships with other users and are free to move between different apps.