This article elaborates on the author's optimism towards Base, analyzes Coinbase's influence, Ethereum's potential, improvements in Base's user experience, and the strength of the team, while sharing the latest developments in the Base ecosystem, especially the rise of AI agents and Farcaster.
Author: ZENECA
Translation: Plain Language Blockchain
In this article, I will share why I think Base is still very important, the areas I am currently focusing on within Base, and how you can participate operationally. I will provide an overview of the ecosystem and share some indicators that make me more confident that the 'Base Era' is approaching.
However, before diving deeper, it's necessary to point out some obvious things: most of the content discussed in this article, as well as the vast majority of projects in the current crypto market (especially those related to memecoins), carry extremely high risks, a huge bubble, and almost everything could plummet 95%-100% from current levels. Like others, I am trying to trade this market; I will sell when I think the price is near the peak and gradually lock in profits as the price rises. In fact, I have already realized some gains.
Don't be a stubborn 'diamond hands' holder, and don't let others' moral pressure prevent you from selling. Ultimately, you have to do what's best for yourself. If your investment has reached an amount that can change your life, then sell, cash out, and change your life.
I've seen too many people ride their way back to the starting point from the peak with large amounts of money, so I want to clarify these risks here. Here are my personal views; they may be wrong, the timing may be off, or there may be other issues. The importance of 'Do Your Own Research' (DYOR) has never been more pronounced.
Next, let's start with Coinbase and discuss why I am optimistic about Base.
1. Reason One: Coinbase is a Major Player
Coinbase is one of the largest and most influential cryptocurrency exchanges globally and an important player in the crypto industry. Whenever a memecoin lands on Coinbase, memecoin investors around the world rejoice because they know this usually means the token's price will (generally speaking) go up. This is because Coinbase provides a convenient channel for average users (or general crypto enthusiasts) to trade these tokens.
Coinbase's mission is to increase economic freedom globally and bring 1 billion people into the on-chain ecosystem. While they would be happy to have 1 billion users on any chain, clearly, they particularly hope to attract these users to their own Base chain.
I believe that most people still underestimate the power of Coinbase's marketing machine and its significance as a company.
As one of the largest trading platforms in the U.S., Coinbase not only occupies a significant commercial position but also frequently represents the entire cryptocurrency industry in legal and political battles.
Last year, when the SEC decided to sue Coinbase, this was one of the few moments in the crypto space where almost everyone united under the same goal. Nothing unites a group more than a common enemy. Of course, there were some dissenters, but to hell with the dissenters; they are insignificant and hardly worth mentioning.
Regarding Coinbase, I would like to add that this company seems genuinely sincere from top to bottom, with very talented employees. It's not that other trading platforms can't achieve this, but the atmosphere that Coinbase exudes is particularly positive.
In short, Coinbase is a very important player. They have their own Layer 2 blockchain, which is likely to be a significant event worth paying attention to.
Speaking of Base, one can't help but mention Ethereum — a blockchain that is both loved and hated by many. However, I believe the ETH era is also about to arrive...
2. Reason Two: The ETH Era
By the way, Ethereum is also a major player. I know it seems that complaining about Ethereum has become a trend on social media, but honestly, I think these voices are just a few loud opinions on Twitter. Most of the truly influential people aren’t spending their days on Twitter. Of course, this applies to all blockchains, but especially to Ethereum (part of the reason being that many have already moved to Farcaster).
I won't deny that Ethereum has indeed experienced some failures. Over the past 12-18 months, it has 'lost' to Solana (SOL) in many aspects. It is slow, has high fees, and due to the existence of many L2s (and L3s), the entire ecosystem appears somewhat fragmented and clunky.
Even so, Ethereum remains the second largest blockchain by market capitalization, with a market cap nearly four times that of other competitors.
Among the 328 blockchains tracked by DeFi Llama, Ethereum still accounts for over 50% of the total locked value (TVL). What a 'dead chain' (laughs).
Clearly, Ethereum's price performance has lagged behind almost all other coins this year. But I believe this situation is about to change.
This is the ETH/BTC chart from the past five years. Clearly, Ethereum's performance has not been ideal over the past two years! But anyone with a bit of knowledge about charts, markets, and investing will tell you that times like this are opportunities to buy, not to sell.
18-24 months ago was when you should have exchanged ETH for BTC or SOL.
I'm not saying you have to exchange BTC or SOL for ETH right now, but it is certainly a better time to exchange than at any point in the past few years.
Yes, yes, I'm going to mention this old cliché again, but it's just too accurate and applicable. The best time to buy SOL was at the peak of panic during the FTX collapse.
I must admit that I reacted a bit late to the miraculous performance of SOL in this wave (at least relatively, I entered when SOL reached about $40). And as a stubborn ETH bull, I may have held on longer than a qualified trader should. But there are reasons why I've remained bullish on ETH, many of which are mentioned in this article.
Much of the dissatisfaction with ETH primarily stems from the friction encountered while using the chain, such as high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. L2 has resolved many of these issues, and they are quickly catching up in their weak areas. So here we are...
3. Reason Three: Usage friction is rapidly disappearing
One major reason for Solana's recent success is its focus on consumer applications and end-user experience. They minimize friction to usage as much as possible; undeniably, compared to other major blockchains, the barrier to entry for ordinary people using the Solana blockchain is much lower. Low transaction costs and fast transaction speeds are important, but mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom and applications like Moonshot have had a huge impact on user acquisition.
With the popularity of memecoins, especially the heat of the Pump Fun protocol, and the network effects brought about by these factors, it is not surprising that all of this has been successful.
But I think Base is experiencing a similar trend or is very close to it. For example, just today, Phantom announced support for Base:
In the past few weeks, I have communicated with people in dozens of Discord/TG chat rooms, and I don't know how many times I've heard someone say: 'Ah, I only have SOL in my wallet, I don't know how to use Base.'
I think this is just the beginning; we will see more and more protocols and applications starting to support Base, and there will also be more applications native to Base appearing.
Moreover, many people still have lingering concerns about Ethereum's high gas fees in 2021 and the poor user experience of MetaMask, but they have not yet experienced the convenience of interacting with Base using Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, or the native Coinbase Wallet (which earns 4.7% native yield on held USDC, quite good).
4. Reason Four: Strong Team Strength
When investing in traditional companies or projects, I have always believed in betting on great talent. And Base has a very strong and reliable team that is casting their magic:
Brian Armstrong casually meets with Trump to discuss cryptocurrency policy. By the way, Brian is truly an incredible person; you can read this article from 2020 (yes, sorry, I'm asking you to read more again) and think about what the world was like back then, as well as the attitudes of most major tech companies towards political stances, then compare that to the radically different approach Brian has led Coinbase to take.
Then there's the face of Base, Jesse Pollak, who leads both Base and Coinbase Wallet.
I've saved dozens of tweets because I was looking for some tweets to post here to showcase his personal characteristics, especially how he has shaped Base into what it is today. Going through his Twitter timeline is simply endless excitement. I recommend you check it out yourself, but for the lazy 99% of you (and if I were in your position, I would be too), here are a few of my favorite tweets:
Jesse is visiting builders and leaders on a 21-day global tour, spreading good news:
Regarding trying to penetrate Instagram and TikTok:
Regarding understanding meme culture (recommended video):
And there's more. The above are just two outstanding individuals working hard to achieve Base's goals. Supporting this team feels quite reassuring.
5. Reason Five: Excellent Data Performance
Data shows that activity on Base has significantly increased, and the capital inflow has also been substantial. For me, the most important indicators for predicting whether a chain might achieve significant success are: 1) the number of builders/developers creating applications; 2) whether capital is flowing into the chain.
Looking back over the past three months, the net capital inflow into Base has been almost on par with Solana:
Looking back over the past week, Base has far outperformed all other platforms:
Trading volume is also steadily increasing, with a rise in recent days:
In recent days, many Base AI agents have gained a lot of attention on Twitter:
Overall, it is clear that traffic and attention are moving towards Base. Whether this can be sustained or is just a temporary fluctuation remains to be seen. Many people claim this is only temporary, and Solana will maintain most of the focus in this round. I obviously disagree but am not arrogant enough to think that I must be right and others must be wrong.
The data looks good, but the data may be temporary.
6. Reason Six: Airdrop Speculation
I want to make it clear that this is purely speculation; I have no insider information and do not know if there will be a Base Token. They have explicitly stated that there will be no token, but similarly, Optimism and many other chains have made similar promises.
However, with significant changes in the legal and regulatory environment, I do not completely rule out the possibility of an airdrop at some future time.
That said, I won't put too much energy into this; I personally treat it as a nice-to-have rather than something to always keep in mind. I suggest using the chain normally and doing some experiments or tries, as this is usually the best way to participate in airdrops when the protocol actually launches an airdrop.
Alright, those are my six reasons for being optimistic about Base and believing that Base Szn may be coming soon. Now let's dive into some areas worth paying attention to and where I spend my time on Base:
7. Base Chain Ecosystem
1) Virtuals Protocol
You may have heard of Virtuals by now, whether through my tweets/retweets or other discussions on the timeline. In simple terms, Virtuals is a platform that provides a launch platform for on-chain AI agents. In their own words:
It has already gained slow and steady adoption over the past few months, with an increase starting a few weeks ago, and showing parabolic growth in the past few days.
I think I don't need to tell you that AI is currently an important topic in the crypto space and will likely remain a mainstream topic and industry for some time to come (if not forever). We've already seen AI meme coins like GOAT and ZEREBRO explode on Solana, and many other projects performing quite well.
Currently, the market value of top AI Tokens and agents on Virtuals is still only a small fraction of the giants on Solana, but if you look at the capital flow and anticipate an ETH season + Base season, then I think focusing on the Virtuals ecosystem will be one of the best places to be.
The two tokens I am most optimistic about (and hold the most of) are AIXBT and VADER, in addition to the native token VIRTUAL. I hold about 20 agent tokens on the platform, and there are many others that I believe will perform well given their already significant market capitalizations; their performance could far exceed the aforementioned tokens.
You can find new Virtual AI agent Tokens being released (and you can also release your own Token). I suggest reading their full white paper to get a comprehensive understanding of the protocol.
Additionally, this was a good thread about Virtuals from last month, providing a high-level overview in plain language: link.
2) Farcaster
Base and Farcaster are closely related. While Farcaster supports and uses multiple chains, Base is currently almost swallowing the entire world. As this chart shows, for most of this year, Base accounted for 60% to 80% of all on-chain transactions by Farcaster users, and in recent days, this number has exceeded 95%.
Regarding Farcaster, there have been two recent integrations that have attracted a lot of attention: clanker and anoncast.
Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that deploys Tokens for users; anyone can mention it via @ and simply request it to create a Token for them. It uses its own funds to create liquidity pools for the token and generates some fees for the creator. People see it as the 'pump fun' of Base, but I think this is not a completely equivalent comparison.
This website is a good place to track the release of new clanker Tokens.
Anoncast is a very cool technology that allows people to post content on Farcaster or even Twitter 100% anonymously through zk-proof technology (which I wrote about last year). You can post content through this website, and you need to hold anon Token (as a utility for labeling).
As developers and experimenters try various new implementations, things are rapidly evolving, and it's worth paying attention to and deeply exploring the developments in Farcaster.
Recommended viewing of this interview where ThreadGuy interviews one of the founders of Farcaster, Dan Romero.
3) 'Old' coins, memes, traditional memes, etc.
While most attention is currently focused on the two places mentioned above, especially with AI-related coins taking up a large share of the attention, I think it's also worth paying attention to some older coins that have been around on Farcaster for a long time and have some loyal communities.
There are too many of these coins to list individually, but by checking the Base page on Dexscreener and sorting by market cap, you will find some nice old memecoins.
I speculate that if we really enter Base Season, there may come a moment when the focus shifts from AI/Farcaster content to cute animals and traditional memes (or perhaps they could happen in parallel).
While the Virtuals ecosystem has recently experienced explosive growth, many of these older coins have also seen declines in the same timeframe. Reflecting on the old saying, 'Be fearful when others are greedy, be greedy when others are fearful,' it may now be a good time to observe those areas that people rarely pay attention to.
4) Other Points Worth Noting
I intended to write a whole section here, but I just saw a fantastic tweet that covers 10 cool apps to try, 10 ways to earn on-chain yields, 10 communities to join, and 10 articles worth reading. So, since that's the case, I won't ramble on and will just let you look at that tweet.
https://x.com/davidtsocy/status/1861507879792189769?s=46&t=sQ0QVUQyoiZQeVyh-DXZpg
There are countless other cool things being built on Base, most of which I obviously cannot cover. What I've mentioned above is just what I've personally focused on over the past few weeks, but I suggest you explore on your own and find the areas that interest you.
Alright, these are the main areas I’m focused on, and finally, a few words about logistics.
I have received many questions about how to get started on Base, so here is a quick start guide/some tips:
If you have funds in your Ethereum wallet, you can bridge your funds to Base using websites like Relay or Bungee. These platforms are very easy to use and have low fees, and bridging usually takes about a minute.
If you have SOL funds in your wallet, you can also use Relay for bridging, or simply choose the bridging option directly in your Phantom wallet.
If you want to trade on Base, you can do it like me, trading manually 90% of the time without a trading bot, but there are also some trading bots that support Base, and I guess there will be more soon. The two most popular trading bots are BullX and Photon (disclaimer: these are referral links).
The main decentralized trading platforms for buying and selling tokens on Base are Aerodrome and Uniswap. Personally, I prefer using the decentralized trading platform aggregator LlamaSwap, which can find the cheapest trading paths for you and help you get the best exchange rates.
The trading method for Virtuals Token is a bit different because all AI agents can only trade with the native VIRTUAL Token. The simplest way to trade is through their website, but you can also use LlamaSwap to exchange Virtuals Token as long as you choose KyberSwap as the decentralized trading platform.
If you're looking for a wallet that works for all Base/EVM Tokens, I personally use and recommend Rabby, and I've also heard good things about Rainbow Wallet. Of course, Coinbase has its own wallet too, but to be honest, I think it lacks features compared to the other two wallets (or maybe I'm just not familiar with it).
8. Summary: The final topic regarding SOL and Base, as well as general views on blockchain competition.
I've always felt that the fierce competition between blockchains is actually quite unnecessary. I personally see 'competing chains' as friendly rivals, like the United States and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand. We tease each other, joke about Solana occasionally having issues, Ethereum's transaction fees being terrifyingly high, and Cardano, well, just being itself.
But ultimately, if you're here to make money (I guess 99% of people are), then you should keep an open mind, try experimenting, and go with the flow.
If you're more concerned about the future of finance, the future of decentralization and censorship resistance, rather than making money, then boldly stick to your views. In this field, you'll encounter various extreme opinions: Bitcoin enthusiasts believe everything except Bitcoin is harmful to the industry; Ethereum enthusiasts think Solana is a blight on the industry; while Solana enthusiasts believe Ethereum and Base are the industry's scourge.
There are even some of Bitcoin's biggest supporters who hate ETFs and MicroStrategy, while others really like them.
I'm saying this to express — no matter which side you're on, you'll encounter a group of people who think you're foolish and that your opinions are silly. To be honest, that's just life; you can let it affect you or, like me, accept it calmly, go with the flow, follow the money, follow the developers, follow the attention, and most importantly: follow my own curiosity.
I suggest you try doing the same. The most valuable information (Alpha) is not to follow my curiosity, my posts, or anyone else's footsteps, but to follow your own curiosity, explore deeply, and think independently.
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/11/5558.html
Source: https://zeneca33.substack.com/p/base-season-my-thesis?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
