“The learning phase is over. A new era is coming,” says CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju.
Google search interest for the term “onchain” surged to an all-time high in May, according to Google Trends data.
Over the past five years, worldwide search interest in the term hovered mostly under 25 out of 100, with a brief spike to around 30 in March.
However, between May 26 and June 1, search interest in “onchain” reached 100 on the index.
The "Onchain Summer" promotion drove activity to the new network, with hundreds of thousands of users minting NFTs in August.
Base network’s “Onchain Summer” promotion in August resulted in over 700,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) minted by over 268,000 unique wallets, according to a Sept. 6 announcement from the team.
Coinbase launched Base, its Ethereum layer-2, on Aug. 9. To spur adoption, the network’s team implemented a month-long launch event. It partnered with over 50 companies, artists, and creators to release new digital art NFTs exclusively on Base. Each art set was released on a different date, requiring users to return to the network repeatedly to collect every piece.
Over the first two weeks of the promotion, over $242 million worth of crypto was bridged to Base, with over 130,000 unique wallets using it each day.
The final NFT set was released on Aug. 31; it will continue to be mintable until Sept. 7. Meanwhile, the Base team has released more detailed information about which digital art sets collectors were interested in the most.
According to the announcement, the Coca-Cola collection available from Aug. 13-16 saw the most activity, with over 80,000 pieces being minted over the period.
Other highly-minted collections include those of Web3 gaming platform Iskra (71,000 mints), social media platform Friends With Benefits (71,000 mints), layer-2 network Zora (70,000 mints) and music rights marketplace anotherblock (55,000 mints).
Related: USD Coin officially expands to Base and Optimism networks
During this period, Base also saw the amount of cryptocurrency locked in its contracts steadily increase, reaching a peak of over $402 million on Sept. 3, according to data from DefiLlama.
Despite these achievements, Base’s launch hasn’t been entirely smooth. The network suffered an outage on Sept. 5 when its sequencer stopped producing blocks. Multiple scams have been promoted on the network as well, including $6.5 million rug-pull Magnate Finance.
Block production on Base abruptly halted for 43 minutes as developers rushed to implement a fix.
Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network Base has suffer its first major outage since its public launch on Aug. 9.
For approximately 45 minutes on Sept. 5, no new blocks were produced on the Base chain. Its developers first identified the "stalled" block production at 9:36 pm UTC, according to the Base status site.
“We identified a delay in block production due to part of our internal infrastructure requiring a refresh. We’ve implemented a fix and are seeing widespread recovery,” Coinbase told Cointelegraph in response to a query on the outage.
Base claims the issue has since been identified with the team now deployed a fix which has seen a "widespread recovery" of block production. It's continuing to monitor the chain for further issues.
Matt Willemsen, head of research at crypto education platform Collective Shift, highlighted the differences in using Ethereum's Layer 2 networks and claimed they aren't as "battle tested" as Ethereum's mainnet.
Coinbase's Base chain just had its first major outage, lasting for 43 minutes. Blocks have just started to be produced again.
— Matt Willemsen (@matt_willemsen) September 5, 2023
Another reminder that using Ethereum L2s (e.g. Arbitrum One, OP Mainnet, zkSync Era, Base) is NOT the same as using Ethereum mainnet, which is more… pic.twitter.com/JbUNQUGNwu
Magazine: Joe Lubin — The truth about ETH founders split and ‘Crypto Google’
In just one week, Base has attracted hundreds of thousands of new users, attention from mainstay brands and artists, and unfortunately, scammers as well.
It’s been an eventful week since Coinbase launched its new layer-2 network Base to the public, bringing with it a frenzy of activity from everyday crypto users, major brands, and more unfortunately, some bad actors as well.
Coinbases’ Onchain Summer festival — a three-week-long campaign celebrating the launch of Base — has seemingly attracted a flock of new users to the ecosystem.
As of Aug. 16, more than 700,000 new users have joined the Base network, and have since bridged a total of $242 million to the network, according to data from Dune Analytics. Activity on the chain peaked on Aug. 10 with more than 136,000 daily active users.
In total, the flurry of activity on the network has generated a staggering $2.8 million in fees and has seen the total value locked (TVL) climb to $170.5 million, according to data from DeFiLlama.
The network also announced involvement from one of the world's biggest soft drinks brands, Coca-Cola, which released its own non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the network.
ᴏɴᴄʜᴀɪɴ ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴇʀ@CocaCola is bringing their Global Masterpiece campaign onchain with iconic works from leading artists.
— Coinbase ️ (@coinbase) August 13, 2023
Mint now: https://t.co/xTWyI3O7IW pic.twitter.com/9wxFgt8qOh
Crypto-native organizations are also making their way to network. On Aug. 16, DeFi derivatives protocol Synthetix revealed that a motion for it to be deployed on the Base network had been unanimously passed by members of its governing DAO, the Spartan Council.
@BuildOnBase
— Synthetix ⚔️ (@synthetix_io) August 16, 2023
SIP 336: Deploy Synthetix V3 on Base has been approved by the Spartan Council.
It's only a matter of time. pic.twitter.com/CIEM0is69y
One of the most notable product launches on Base was the decentralized social (DeSo) network Friend.tech, which allows crypto users to tokenize their social network, by buying and selling “shares” of their friends. Since its launch on Aug. 11, the social media platform has seen some 7,736 Ether (ETH) in trading volume, according to data from Dune Analytics.
https://t.co/L11mNJZgY3 is built by @0xRacerAlt, a crypto OG.
— yuga.eth (@yugacohler) August 11, 2023
He was the lead dev of @TweetDAO - an NFT which granted access to posting from a shared Twitter account.
The project went viral before devolving. It was one of the first forays into decentralized social media. pic.twitter.com/3wGo0aQ2Ip
Music NFT platform anotherblock launched on Aug. 14, featuring never-before-heard on-chain releases from electronic music producers Boys Noize and Laidback Luke.
Binance-owned self-custody service Trust Wallet and enterprise-grade digital asset platform Fireblocks have also added support for the Base Network since its public launch.
Ethereum advocate Anthony Sassano shared his praise for the broader move towards decentralized applications and on-chain activities, predicting that centralized exchanges will eventually become nothing more than fiat ramps.
That would be a silly lawsuit imo
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) August 12, 2023
If done right, Base can be a huge growth driver for Coinbase as it acts as the best "front door" for Base
My long-term thesis is that pretty much all CEXs will be relegated to just being fiat ramps - onchain will replace the other things
Despite the general tone of enthusiasm from the wider crypto community, the launch of the network has also drawn the attention of nefarious actors, with a number of exploits and rug pulls since its public launch.
On Aug. 14, one of the top decentralized exchanges (DEX), RocketSwap revealed that they had suffered an exploit, with an estimated $865,000 being stolen from the protocol.
The most recent incident came on Aug. 17 when crypto lender SwirlLend carried out an “exit scam” — otherwise known as a rug pull.
Update: SwirlLend rugged both on #Base and #Linea. The scammer has already bridged ~94 $ETH from #Linea to #Ethereum via Orbiter Finance: Bridge and and is currently in the process of transferring the stolen funds from #Base to #Ethereum
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 16, 2023
The current balance of the scammer's… pic.twitter.com/zexiNuFVhs
After wiping its social media accounts and deleting its website, SwirlLend reportedly transferred roughly $290,000 worth of cryptocurrency from Base, as well as an additional $1.7 million from Linea. It then laundered a total of 253.2 ETH through the Tornado Cash crypto mixer.
Related: Coinbase app is ‘broken’ for UX, admits CEO Brian Armstrong
Bad actors have however been circling the network since its mainnet launch for developers. On July 31, when a Brian Amrstrong-themed memecoin dubbed “BALD” lost 85% of its value after the developer suddenly withdrew $1.9 million in liquidity from the token’s pools. The developer has denied orchestrating a rug pull.
The following day, Base’s then-largest decentralized exchange (DEX) LeetSwap announced that some of its liquidity pools had been compromised with losses topping $600,000.
Deposit risk: What do crypto exchanges really do with your money?
