Base Move for Blockchain Breakthrough

Some good news amid the latest regulatory turmoil, Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) powered by the OP stack, is moving closer to its mainnet launch following the successful launch of the Base testnet in February.

With a focus on safety and security, Base aims to provide a secure and cost-effective platform for developers worldwide to build decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain.

During the Base Builder Quests campaign, which witnessed an increase in contract deployments on the Base testnet, the project faced challenges related to scalability and performance.

This wave of data-heavy transactions exposed L2 data management issues, particularly regarding unique data processing and synchronization with the Layer 1 (L1) Ethereum network.

The increase in contract creations led to a backlog of pending data, causing delays in processing and synchronizing L2 blocks with the L1 network.

This issue had not been observed in a mainnet environment before, but it provided an opportunity for the base team to identify and implement solutions that could improve the scalability of the OP stack.

To counter this, adjustments were made to the compression ratio, gas limits and number of confirmations required to write L2 batches to L1.

Despite these adjustments, the system initially struggled to reach equilibrium, resulting in a significant number of uncommitted blocks.

However, as the Base Builder Quests campaign slowed, the team was able to close the gap and bring the system back into balance.

For a long-term solution, the Base team implemented two changes to the batcher, which improved the throughput of the system. First, they introduced an improved compression implementation for better utilization of L1 transaction call data.

Second, they enabled the submission of multiple batch transactions per L1 block, rather than processing them one at a time. Load testing indicated that these changes increased Butcher throughput by up to five times, limited only by the capacity of L1 blocks.

These enhancements not only improve the scalability of Base and OP Stack, but also offer several benefits to users on the mainnet. The changes pave the way to increase block gas limits, ensure low base fees and maintain availability as demand for block space grows.

In addition, the changes help maintain synchronization between secure and insecure blocks, and facilitate faster transactions and withdrawals on custodian exchanges that rely on updated secure blocks.

Also read: Coinbase CEO Armstrong confirms continuation of Staking Service

The team behind Base brings years of experience scaling cryptocurrency from their work at Coinbase. With a focus on scaling Base and OP Stack, they are determined to power the next generation of crypto by attracting millions of developers and billions of users to the blockchain.