Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base plans for 2023 mainnet launch

Image credit: Base

Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that interviews crypto newsmakers to better understand the technology behind the hype and the people working to build a decentralized future.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn the interview Jesse Pollak, Head of Base and Head of Protocols at Coinbase. Base is an Ethereum-focused layer 2 blockchain launched by Coinbase in February. Pollak previously led all retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Wallet. In a previous life, Pollak started Clef, a 2FA mobile app, and was an engineer at BuzzFeed.

The platform has been live in the testnet, which is a test phase of the blockchain network, since the end of February. It doesn’t share “official timelines,” but Pollak exclusively revealed to TechCrunch that Base is planning its mainnet launch in 2023. The mainnet is the full version of a blockchain on the mainnet (hence the name: mainnet.)

“It’s coming soon, we’re working hard on it,” Pollack said. “That’s our number one priority along with the decentralization goals, and the rest of the year is really about making sure we get there as quickly as possible.”

Base’s vision is to bring a million builders and a billion users on-chain through “easy-to-use” products on its platform, Pollak said.

Coinbase has built itself up in the crypto-economy for more than a decade, but Base hopes to extract some of that value for itself and plans to help products and activities expand the chain over the next decade. “I’m thinking less about Base passing Coinbase and more about how Base plus Coinbase over the next decade is going to work together to bring these millions of developers [and] billions of users on the chain,” Pollack said.

A number of crypto companies, platforms, marketplaces and infrastructure firms have committed to building on Base, including: Blockdaemon, Chainlink, Etherscan, Quicknode, Aave, Animoca Brands, Dune, Nansen, Magic Eden, Pyth, Rainbow Wallet, Ribbon Finance, The Graph, Wormhole and Gelato, to name a handful.

The short-term plan is to get Base to the mainnet and decentralize it, Pollak said. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told Pollak, “We can’t decentralize this. We have to live up to that value and that ethos.”

Base hopes to be decentralized from Coinbase within “months or years” rather than a decade, Pollak said. The process of becoming decentralized “is not an eternal timeline,” but rather a matter of “how do we progress this today,” Pollak added. “When I wake up every morning and say p zero, how do we decentralize?”

We of course talked a lot about Base on the podcast and where it is going in the future, as well as how regulation can affect the blockchain.

We also went into:

• Developers are growing internationally
• Community benefits build on Base
• Blockchain inspiration
• The base’s performance to date
• Advice for developers

The article mentioned during the episode can be found here.

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