Original title: Base Season: My Thesis
Original author: ZENECA
Original translation: Plain Blockchain
In this article, I will share why I believe Base is still very important, the areas I am currently focusing on within Base, and how you can participate from an operational perspective. I will provide an overview of the ecosystem and share some indicators that make me more convinced that the 'Base era' is coming soon.
However, before diving deeper, it is necessary to state some obvious points: Most of the content involved in this article, as well as the vast majority of projects currently in the crypto market (especially those related to memecoins), carry extremely high risks, huge bubbles, and almost everything could plummet 95%-100% from current levels. Like others, I am trying to trade this market; I will sell when I believe the price is approaching its peak and gradually lock in profits as prices rise. In fact, I have already realized some profits.
Don't be a stubborn 'diamond hand' holder, and don't be unwilling to sell due to others' moral coercion. Ultimately, you have to do what is most beneficial for yourself. If your investment has reached a life-changing amount, then sell, cash out, and change your life.
I have seen too many people ride their funds back to 'square one' from the peak, so I want to state these risks upfront. 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 prominent.
Next, let's start with Coinbase and talk about why I am optimistic about Base.
1. Reason One: Coinbase is a major player
Coinbase is one of the largest and most influential cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world and a key player in the crypto industry. Whenever a memecoin lands on Coinbase, global memecoin investors rejoice because they know it usually means the price of that Token will (generally) 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 worldwide and bring 1 billion people into the on-chain ecosystem. While they would be pleased with 1 billion users on any chain, it is clear that they particularly hope to attract these users to their own Base chain.
I believe most people still underestimate the power of Coinbase's marketing machine and the importance of it as a company.
As one of the largest trading platforms in the United States, Coinbase occupies an important position in business and often represents the entire crypto industry in legal and political battles.
Last year, when the SEC decided to sue Coinbase, it was one of the few moments in the crypto space when almost everyone united under the same goal. Nothing inspires group cohesion like a common enemy. Of course, there are 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 to be filled with sincerity from top to bottom, and the staff are very excellent. This is not to say that other trading platforms cannot achieve this, but Coinbase exudes a particularly positive atmosphere.
In short, Coinbase is a very important player. They have their own Layer 2 blockchain, which is likely to be a significant event to watch.
When it comes to Base, we must mention Ethereum - a blockchain that is both loved and hated. 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 to have become a trend to complain about Ethereum on social media these days, but honestly, I believe these voices are merely a few loud opinions on Twitter. Most influential people do not spend all day on Twitter. Of course, this applies to all blockchains, but especially for Ethereum (partly because many people have moved to Farcaster).
I will not 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, expensive, and due to the presence of numerous L2s (and L3s), the entire ecosystem seems somewhat fragmented and clumsy.
Even so, Ethereum remains the second largest blockchain by market capitalization, with a market cap nearly 4 times that of its 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 cryptocurrencies this year. But I believe that is about to change.
This is the ETH/BTC chart from the past five years. Clearly, Ethereum's performance over the last two years has not been ideal! But anyone with a little understanding of charts, markets, and investments will tell you that times like this are opportunities to buy, not sell.
18-24 months ago was the time you should have exchanged ETH for BTC or SOL.
I am not saying you should definitely exchange BTC or SOL for ETH right now, but it is certain that now is a much better time to exchange than at any point in the past few years.
Yes, yes, I am going to bring up this old cliché again, but it is so accurate and applicable. The best time to buy SOL was during the peak panic after the FTX collapse.
I must admit, I reacted a bit late to SOL's magical performance 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 competent trader should. But there are reasons I have been bullish on ETH, and many of those reasons have been mentioned in this article.
Many people's dissatisfaction with ETH mainly comes from the friction when using the chain, such as high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. L2 has solved many of these issues, and they are quickly catching up in their weak areas. Thus we come to...
3. Reason Three: The friction in usage is rapidly disappearing
One important reason for Solana's recent success is its focus on consumer applications and end-user experience. They minimize friction of use as much as possible; it is undeniable that compared to other major blockchains, the barrier for ordinary people to use the Solana blockchain is much lower. Low transaction costs and fast transaction speeds are certainly important, but mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom and applications like Moonshot have had a huge impact on onboarding new users.
Combined with the popularity of memecoins, especially the heat of the Pump Fun protocol, and the network effects brought by these factors, it is clear that this success is not surprising.
But I believe that Base is experiencing a similar trend, or is very close to it. For example, just today, Phantom announced it would support Base:
In the past few weeks, I have communicated with people in dozens of Discord/TG chat rooms, and I cannot count how many times I have heard someone say, 'Ah, I only have SOL in my wallet, I don't know how to use Base.'
I believe this is just the beginning, and we will see more protocols and applications starting to support Base, and more applications native to Base will emerge.
Moreover, many people still have lingering fears about Ethereum's high gas fees and the poor user experience of MetaMask in 2021, but they have yet to experience the convenience of interacting with Base using Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, or Base's native Coinbase Wallet (which earns 4.7% native yield on USDC, quite nice).
4. Reason Four: Strong team strength
When investing in traditional companies or projects, I always firmly believe in betting on great talent. And Base has a very strong and extremely reliable team that is working its magic:
Brian Armstrong casually meets with Trump to discuss cryptocurrency policy. By the way, Brian is really an incredible figure; you can read this article from 2020 (yes, sorry, I'm asking you to read more again) and remember what the world was like then, and how most large tech companies stood politically, and compare it to the completely different approach Brian has taken leading Coinbase.
Then there is the face of Base, Jesse Pollak, who leads both Base and Coinbase Wallet.
I really saved dozens of tweets because I was looking for some tweets to post here to showcase his personal qualities, especially how he made Base what it is today. Browsing through his Twitter timeline is an endless delight. I recommend you check it out yourself, but for the lazy 99% of you (if I were in your position, I would too), here are a few of my favorite tweets:
Jesse is on a 21-day global tour, visiting builders and leaders, spreading the good news:
Regarding attempts to break into Instagram and TikTok:
On understanding meme culture (highly recommend watching the video):
There is more. The above are just two outstanding individuals working hard to achieve the goals of Base.
5. Reason Five: Excellent data performance
Data shows that activity on Base has significantly increased, and capital inflows are also substantial. For me, the most important indicators to predict 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, Base's net capital inflow has been almost on par with Solana:
Looking back over the past week, Base's performance has far exceeded all other platforms:
Trading volume has also been steadily increasing, with a recent uptick:
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 claim this is only temporary, and Solana will maintain most of the attention in this round. I clearly disagree, but I'm not arrogant enough to think 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 I do not know if there will be a Base Token. They have made it clear that there will not be a 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 point in the future.
That said, I won't put too much energy into this; I personally consider it a nice bonus rather than a constant concern. I suggest using the chains normally and doing some experiments or trials, as this is often the best way to participate in airdrops when the protocol actually launches them.
Alright, above are six reasons I am optimistic about Base and believe that Base Szn may be coming soon. Now, let's dive into some key areas to watch and where I spend my time on Base:
7. The Base chain ecosystem
1) The Virtuals protocol
You may have already heard of Virtuals, whether through my tweets/retweets or from other discussions on your timeline. Simply put, Virtuals is a platform that provides a launchpad for on-chain AI agents. In their own words:
Over the past few months, it has gained slow but steady adoption, started to rise a few weeks ago, and has recently begun to show parabolic growth.
I think I don't need to tell you that AI is currently an important topic in the crypto space, and it might be a mainstream topic and industry for some time to come (if not forever). We have already seen AI meme coins like GOAT and ZEREBRO explode on Solana, and many other projects are also performing well.
Currently, the market value of top AI Tokens and agents on Virtuals is still just a small part of the giants on Solana, but if you look at the capital flow and anticipate an ETH season + Base season, I think focusing on the Virtuals ecosystem will be one of the best places to watch.
The two Tokens I am most optimistic about (and hold the most of) are AIXBT and VADER, and in addition, the native Token VIRTUAL. I hold about 20 Tokens of agents on the platform, and there are many other agents that I believe will perform well, considering they already have a large market cap and their performance may far exceed the above Tokens.
You can find new Virtual AI agent Tokens being released (and you can also publish your own Tokens). I recommend reading their full white paper to understand the protocol comprehensively.
Additionally, here is a good thread about Virtuals from last month that provides a high-level overview in an easily digestible manner: link.
2) Farcaster
Base and Farcaster are closely related. Although Farcaster supports and uses multiple chains, Base is currently almost swallowing the entire world. This chart shows that for most of this year, Base accounted for 60% to 80% of all on-chain transactions of Farcaster users, and in recent days, this number has exceeded 95%.
Regarding Farcaster, there have been two integrations recently that have garnered a lot of attention: clanker and anoncast.
Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that deploys Tokens for users. Anyone can simply mention it with @ and request it to create a Token for you. It uses its own funds to create liquidity pools for Tokens and generates some fees for the creators. People see it as the 'pump fun' of Base, but I think this is not a completely equivalent comparison.
This website is a great place to track new clanker Token releases.
Anoncast is a very cool technology that allows people to publish content 100% anonymously on Farcaster and even Twitter using zk-proof technology (which I wrote about last year). You can publish content through this website and need to hold anon Token (as a utility for tagging).
Things are rapidly developing as developers and experimenters try various new implementations, and it is worth paying attention to and exploring the development of Farcaster.
I recommend watching 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 dominating most of the attention, I think it is 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 coins to list individually, but by checking the Base page on Dexscreener and sorting by market cap, you will find some decent old-school Memecoins.
I speculate that if we really enter the Base Season, there may be a moment when the attention shifts from AI/Farcaster content to cute animals and traditional memes (or possibly occur in parallel).
While the Virtuals ecosystem has recently experienced explosive growth, many of these older coins have also seen declines during the same timeframe. Remember the old saying, 'Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful'; it may be a good time to observe those areas that people rarely pay attention to.
4) Other points worth noting
I originally planned to write a whole section here, but just saw a really great tweet that covers 10 cool applications to try, 10 ways to earn on-chain, 10 communities to join, and 10 articles to read. So, since that’s the case, I won’t ramble on and just take a 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 clearly cannot cover. The above-mentioned are just the things I've personally focused on in the past few weeks, but I suggest you explore for yourself and find those areas that interest you.
Alright, this is the main area I am focusing 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 them to Base through websites like Relay or Bungee. These platforms are very user-friendly and low-cost, and bridging usually only takes about a minute.
If you have SOL funds in your wallet, you can also use Relay to bridge, or simply select the bridge option directly in the Phantom wallet.
If you want to trade on Base, you can manually trade like I do 90% of the time without using trading bots, but there are also some trading bots that support Base, and I guess there will soon be more. 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 to use the decentralized trading platform aggregator LlamaSwap, which can find you the cheapest trading paths and help you get the best exchange rates.
The trading method for Virtuals Tokens is a bit different, as all AI agents can only trade using the native VIRTUAL Token. The simplest way to trade is through their website, but you can also use LlamaSwap to exchange Virtuals Tokens, as long as you choose KyberSwap as the decentralized trading platform.
If you are looking for a wallet suitable for all Base/EVM Tokens, I personally use and recommend Rabby, and I have also heard that Rainbow Wallet is also very good. Of course, Coinbase also has its own wallet, but to be honest, I personally think it does not have the functionality of the other two wallets (or I just am not familiar with it).
8. Summary: The final topic regarding SOL and Base, and a general view on blockchain competition.
I have 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, mock Solana for occasionally having issues, criticize Ethereum for its exorbitant transaction fees, and well, Cardano is just doing its own thing.
But ultimately, if you are here to make money (I guess 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 decentralization and censorship resistance, rather than just making money, then boldly stick to your views. In this field, you will encounter various extreme opinions: Bitcoin maximalists believe everything but Bitcoin is harmful to the industry; Ethereum maximalists believe Solana is a scourge to the industry; and Solana maximalists believe Ethereum and Base are the scourges of the industry.
Some of the biggest Bitcoin supporters hate ETFs and MicroStrategy, while others are very fond of them.
I say this to express - no matter which side you are on, you will encounter a group of people who think you are foolish and that your views are silly. To be honest, that's 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) does not come from following my curiosity, my posts, or anyone else's footsteps, but from following your own curiosity, exploring deeply, and thinking independently.
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