Translation: Blockchain in Vernacular
In this post, I’ll share why I think Base is still important, the areas I’m currently focusing on in Base, and how you can get involved at an operational level. I’ll provide an ecosystem overview and share some indicators that make me more confident that the “Base era” is coming.
Before we get into that, though, it’s important to state something obvious: most of what’s covered in this article, and the vast majority of projects in the crypto market right now (especially as it relates to memecoin), are extremely risky, extremely bubbly, and almost everything could plummet 95%-100% from current levels. I’m trying to trade this market like everyone else, selling when I think prices are near a top and locking in profits as they rise. In fact, I’ve already cashed out some of my gains.
Don't be a stubborn "diamond hand" holder, and don't be unwilling to sell because of others' moral blackmail. At the end of the day, you have to do what is best for you. If your investment has reached a life-changing amount, then sell it, cash out, and change your life.
I have seen too many people lose large sums of money from the peak all the way back to the starting point, so I will explain the risks here. The following is my personal opinion, it may be wrong, it may be wrong in timing, and it may have other problems. The importance of "doing your own research" (DYOR) has never been more important.
Next, let’s start with Coinbase and talk about why I am optimistic about Base.
1. Reason 1: Coinbase is a big player
Coinbase is one of the world’s largest and most influential cryptocurrency exchanges and a major player in the crypto industry. Whenever a memecoin is listed on Coinbase, memecoin investors around the world rejoice because they know that this usually means the price of the token will (generally speaking) rise. This is because Coinbase provides a convenient channel for ordinary users (or general crypto enthusiasts) to trade these tokens.
Coinbase’s mission is to increase economic freedom around the world and bring 1 billion people to the on-chain ecosystem. While they would be happy to have 1 billion users on any chain, they are obviously particularly interested in attracting these users to their own Base chain.
I think most people still underestimate the power of Coinbase’s marketing machine and how important it is as a company.
As one of the largest exchanges in the United States, Coinbase not only occupies an important position in business, but also often engages in legal and political battles on behalf of the entire crypto industry.
Last year, when the SEC decided to sue Coinbase, it was one of the rare moments I've had in crypto where almost everyone was united behind a common cause. Nothing inspires group cohesion more than a common enemy. Sure, there were some naysayers, but screw the naysayers, they were so insignificant that they're barely worth mentioning.
I would also like to add one thing about Coinbase - the company seems to be full of sincerity from top to bottom, and the employees are very good. Not to say that other exchanges can't do this, but the atmosphere that Coinbase gives off is particularly positive.
In short, Coinbase is a very important player. They have their own Layer 2 blockchain, which is likely to be a big event worth paying attention to.
Speaking of Base, we have to mention Ethereum, a blockchain that everyone loves and hates. However, I think the era of ETH is coming soon...
2. Reason 2: ETH Era
Ethereum is also a big player, by the way. I know it seems to be a trend to rant about Ethereum on social media these days, but to be honest I think these are just a few of the loudest opinions on Twitter. Most of the really influential people are not on Twitter all the time. This is true for all blockchains, of course, but it is particularly true for Ethereum (partly because many people have moved on to Farcaster).
I won’t deny that Ethereum has had some failures. It has “lost” to Solana (SOL) in many ways over the past 12-18 months. It’s slow, it’s expensive, and the ecosystem is a bit fragmented and unwieldy due to the many L2s (and L3s) out there.
Even so, Ethereum remains the second-largest blockchain by market cap, with a market cap nearly 4 times that of its rival.
Among the 328 blockchains tracked by DeFi Llama, Ethereum still accounts for more than 50% of the total locked value (TVL). It’s really a “dead chain” (laughs).
Clearly, Ethereum’s price performance has lagged behind almost every other cryptocurrency this year. But I think that’s about to change.
This is a chart of ETH/BTC over the past five years or so. Clearly, Ethereum hasn’t had a great two years! But anyone with a passing knowledge of charts, markets, and investing will tell you that these are opportunities to buy, not sell.
18-24 months ago was the time when you should have traded ETH for BTC or SOL.
I’m not saying you should definitely trade BTC or SOL for ETH right now, but it’s certainly a much better time to do so than at any time in the past few years.
Yes, yes, I am bringing up this cliché again, but it is so accurate and applicable. The best time to buy SOL was at the height of the panic after the FTX crash.
I must admit that I was a little late to the SOL magic in this move (at least relatively speaking, I got in when SOL hit ~$40). And I was probably a die-hard ETH bull for longer than a competent trader should have been. But there are reasons why I have been bullish on ETH, many of which are mentioned in this post.
A lot of people’s frustration with ETH stems from the friction of using the chain, such as high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. L2 solves many of these problems, and they are catching up quickly in areas where they are weak. Which brings us to…
3. Reason 3: Usage friction is disappearing rapidly
A big reason for Solana’s recent success is its focus on consumer adoption and end-user experience. They’ve reduced friction as much as possible, and it’s undeniable that the barrier to entry for the average person to use the Solana blockchain is much lower than it is for other major blockchains. Low transaction fees and fast transaction speeds are certainly important, but mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom, and apps like Moonshot have had a huge impact on new user acquisition.
Coupled with the popularity of memecoin, especially the popularity of the Pump Fun protocol, and the network effects brought about by the superposition of these factors, it is obviously not surprising that all this success has been achieved.
But I think Base is on the verge of a similar trend, or is already very close. For example, just today, Phantom announced that it will support Base:
I've been in dozens of Discord/TG chat rooms over the past few weeks and I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say, "Ah, I only have SOL in my wallet and I don't know how to use Base."
I think this is just the beginning. We will see more and more protocols and applications supporting Base, and more applications native to Base will emerge.
In addition, many people are still reeling from Ethereum’s high gas fees and MetaMask’s poor user experience in 2021, but they have not yet experienced the convenience of interacting with Base using Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, or Base’s native Coinbase Wallet (which offers a 4.7% native yield on USDC held, which is pretty good).
4. Reason 4: Strong team strength
When investing in traditional companies or projects, I always believe in betting on excellent talents. Base has a group of very capable and extremely reliable team members who are working their magic:
Brian Armstrong casually meets with Trump to discuss crypto policy. Brian is a really amazing guy, by the way, read this article from 2020 (yes, sorry, I asked you to read more again) and think about what the world was like back then and where most of the big tech companies stood on politics at the time, and compare it to the very different approach Brian is taking at Coinbase.
And then there’s the face of Base, Jesse Pollak, who leads both Base and the Coinbase wallet.
I literally saved dozens of tweets because I was looking for something to put here that would showcase his personality and especially how he made Base what it is today. Scrolling through his Twitter timeline is endlessly fascinating. I recommend checking it out for yourself, but for the lazy folks out there, which is 99% of you (and me if I were in your shoes), here are a few of my favorites:
Jesse is on a 21-day global tour visiting builders and leaders to spread the good news:
On trying to break into Instagram and TikTok:
About understanding meme culture (recommended video):
There are many more. These are just two of the outstanding people working towards Base's goals. It feels really safe to support this team.
5. Reason 5: Excellent data performance
Data shows a significant increase in activity on Base, along with significant inflows. To me, the most important indicators for predicting whether a chain is likely to be a major success are: 1) the number of apps created by builders/developers; 2) whether money is flowing into the chain.
Looking back over the past three months, Base’s net inflows are almost as high as Solana’s:
Looking back at the past week, Base has far outperformed all other platforms:
Trading volume has also been growing steadily, with an uptick in recent days:
Many of Base’s AI agents have received a lot of attention on Twitter over the past few days:
Overall, it’s clear that traffic and attention are moving toward Base. Whether this is sustainable or just a temporary blip remains to be seen. Many are claiming this is just temporary and that Solana will keep most of the attention this round. I obviously disagree, but I’m not arrogant enough to think I’m right and everyone else is wrong.
The data looks good, but it may be temporary.
6. Reason 6: Airdrop speculation
I want to be clear that this is pure speculation and I have no inside information as to whether there will be a Base token. They have made it clear that there will not be a token, but again, Optimism and many other chains have made similar promises.
However, with the legal and regulatory environment changing significantly, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that there might be an airdrop at some point in the future.
That being said, I wouldn't put too much focus on this, I personally see it as a nice to have, not something to always keep in mind. I recommend using the chain normally and doing some experiments or trying things out, as this is usually the best way to participate in airdrops when the protocol does launch one.
OK, so those are my six reasons why I’m bullish on Base and think Base Szn could be around the corner, now let’s dive into some of the areas to watch and where I’m spending my time with Base:
7. Base Chain Ecosystem
1) Virtuals Protocol
You’ve probably heard of Virtuals by now, if not through my tweets/retweets then probably through other discussions on your timeline. In simple terms, Virtuals is a platform that provides a launchpad for on-chain AI agents. In their own words:
It has been gaining slow and steady adoption over the past few months, started to pick up a few weeks ago, and has gone parabolic in the past few days.
I don’t think I need to tell you that AI is a big topic in crypto right now, and will likely be a mainstream topic and industry for some time (or even forever). We’ve already seen AI meme coins like GOAT and ZEREBRO take off on Solana, and many other projects are also doing well.
Right now the market value of the top AI tokens and agents on Virtuals is still only a fraction of the giants on Solana, but if you look at capital flows and anticipate an ETH season + Base season, then I think the Virtuals ecosystem would be one of the best places to focus on.
My two favorite tokens (and the ones I hold the most) are AIXBT and VADER, in addition to the native token VIRTUAL. I hold tokens of about 20 proxies on the platform, and there are many more that I think will do well and may outperform the above tokens by a large margin given their already large market caps.
You can find new Virtual AI agent tokens being released (and you can also release your own tokens). I recommend reading their full whitepaper to fully understand the protocol.
Also, here’s a great thread from last month about Virtuals that gives a high-level overview in plain English: link.
2) Farcaster
Base and Farcaster are closely related. While Farcaster supports and uses multiple chains, Base is pretty much eating the world right now. As you can see from this chart, for most of this year, Base accounted for 60% to 80% of all on-chain transactions for Farcaster users, and in recent days, that number has reached over 95%.
Regarding Farcaster, there are two integrations that have attracted a lot of attention recently, namely clanker and anoncast.
Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that deploys tokens for users, anyone can simply request it to create tokens for you by @mentioning it. It creates liquidity pools for tokens with its own funds and generates some fees for the creator. People see it as a "pump fun" for Base, although I don't think it's a completely apples-to-apples comparison.
This site is a great place to keep track of new clanker token releases.
Anoncast is a really cool technology that allows people to post content on Farcaster and even Twitter 100% anonymously through zk-proof technology (something I wrote about last year). You can post content through this site and you need to hold anon tokens (which serve as a utility for the hashtag).
Things are moving quickly as developers and experimenters try out new implementations, and it’ll be worth keeping an eye on and exploring Farcaster’s development in depth.
I recommend watching this interview where ThreadGuy interviews Dan Romero, one of the founders of Farcaster.
3) “Old” coins, memes, traditional memes, etc.
While most of the attention is currently focused on the two places mentioned above, especially AI-related coins that occupy most of the attention, I think it is also worth paying attention to some old coins that have been on Farcaster for a long time and have some loyal communities.
There are too many of these coins to list here, but if you look through the Base page on Dexscreener and sort by market cap you’ll find some nice old-school Memecoins.
I suspect that if we do get Base Season, there might come a point where the focus shifts away from AI/Farcaster content and toward cute animals and traditional memes (or, perhaps, both in parallel).
While the Virtuals ecosystem has experienced a burst of growth recently, many of these older coins have also seen declines in the same time frame, and recalling the old saying “be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful”, it may be a good time to observe those places where people rarely pay attention.
4) Other points worth noting
I was going to write a whole paragraph here, but I just saw a really great tweet covering 10 cool apps to try, 10 ways to earn on-chain yield, 10 communities to join, and 10 articles to read. So, I’ll just skip this and get to the tweet.
https://x.com/davidtsocy/status/1861507879792189769?s=46&t=sQ0QVUQyoiZQeVyh-DXZpg
There are tons of other cool stuff being built on Base, most of which I obviously can't cover. The ones mentioned above are just the ones I've personally been focusing on over the past few weeks, but I encourage you to explore on your own and find the ones that interest you.
Well, that's my main focus, let me say a few words about logistics.
Interaction Flow on Base I get a lot of questions about how to get started on Base, so here is a quick start guide/some tips:
If you have funds in an Ethereum wallet, you can bridge your funds to Base through a website like Relay or Bungee. These platforms are very easy to use and have low fees, and the bridge usually only takes about a minute.
If you have SOL funds in your wallet, you can also use Relay for bridging, or select the bridge option directly in the Phantom wallet.
If you want to trade on Base, you can do what I do and not use a trading bot and trade manually 90% of the time, but there are 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 exchanges for buying and selling tokens on Base are Aerodrome and Uniswap. Personally, I prefer to use the decentralized exchange aggregator LlamaSwap, which can find the cheapest trading path for you and help you get the best exchange rate.
Trading Virtuals tokens is a little different, as all AI agents can only be traded using the native VIRTUAL token. The easiest way to trade is through their website, but you can also use LlamaSwap to exchange Virtuals tokens, as long as you choose KyberSwap as your decentralized exchange.
If you are looking for a wallet that works for all Base/EVM tokens, I personally use and recommend Rabby, and have heard that Rainbow Wallet is pretty good as well. Of course, Coinbase has its own wallet, but to be honest, I personally don't think it has as many features as the other two (or I'm just not familiar with them).
8. Summary: Final topic about SOL and Base, and general views on blockchain competition
I’ve always felt that the fierce competition between blockchains is actually quite unnecessary. I personally view “competing chains” as friendly rivals, like the United States and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand. We joke with each other about Solana’s occasional problems, Ethereum’s horrible transaction fees, and Cardano, well, just being itself.
But ultimately, if you are here to make money (and I'm guessing 99% of people are), then you should keep an open mind, try experiments, and go with the flow.
If you care more about the future of finance, about a decentralized and censorship-free future, than about making money, then be bold in your views. In this space, you will encounter all kinds of extreme views: Bitcoin geeks think that everything except Bitcoin is harmful to the industry; Ethereum geeks think Solana is the bane of the industry; and Solana geeks think Ethereum and Base are the bane of the industry.
Even some of Bitcoin’s biggest supporters hate ETFs and MicroStrategy, while others love them a lot.
I say this to say the least - no matter which side you're on, you're going to run into a bunch of people who think you're stupid and that your opinions are stupid. Honestly, that's life, and you can let it get to you, or be like me and just roll with the punches, follow the money, follow the developers, follow the attention, and most importantly: follow my own curiosity.
I suggest you try this. 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.
