Crypto exchange Coinbase’s new Layer 2 Blockchain on Ethereum’s optimism, base, has rocky rollout

The debut of Coinbase’s new Layer 2 blockchain, Base, proved anything but smooth, as Thursday’s testnet rollout drew user complaints and jabs on Twitter.

The new Ethereum-focused protocol forms an integral part of Coinbase’s strategy to steer the business into the developer space — especially critical after a decline in exchange traffic and disappointing quarterly results.

But just hours after Base’s debut, the network was already experiencing problems, with users flooding social media to complain about the network’s functionality.

“Base’s bridge is off to a rough start. Every single transaction goes back and the bridge contract is unconfirmed so no one can figure out what’s going on,” Twitter user wrote @0xfoobar next to a screenshot of a transaction list from Etherscan, where transactions appear to have been rolled back.

The testnet malfunction was caused by a problem with Coinbase’s wallets, which incorrectly estimated the amount of gas, or fees, required to carry out users’ transactions, according to Coinbase.

As a result, users paid less gas than necessary to complete their transactions, causing Base to reset those transactions instead of processing them.

“The bridge contracts increase gas usage under load, which wallets were not correctly estimated,” Coinbase software engineer Roberto Bayardo explained on Twitter a few hours after the launch. “Hard-coded a higher throttle limit.”

A sudden rush of users may have overwhelmed the protocol and also caused problems during the testnet’s launch day, according to Bayardo.

“There are still some other limits that can still be hit – people (and robots?) are bridging like crazy it seems,” tweeted Bayardo.

Further scrutiny came after the Base team softened a pledge on its website to donate 20% of sequencer revenue to “fund public goods”. Screenshots of the page was posted by Twitter user @tier10k.

Hours after the screenshots were timestamped, the website was updated to state that Base will contribute an undisclosed percentage, or a “portion of sequencer revenue,” to public benefits.

A Coinbase representative said the 20% figure was removed from Base’s website as it works with the Optimism Collective to finalize the amount of revenue that will be allocated to public goods.

“Initially we included a percentage to that revenue amount, but we are in the process of finalizing that percentage and have therefore removed that specific number from our website until it is established,” the representative said.