Author: Yuliya, PANews
The Web3 world has long lacked a true super entry point, with users hopping between different applications, experiencing fragmentation and scattered traffic. However, a strong competitor has emerged, attempting to end this situation.
In the early morning of July 17, Base held the highly anticipated 'A New Day One' launch event, announcing a significant upgrade to its ecosystem. The core of this launch was not merely an update of technical parameters—although a tenfold performance improvement and a refreshed logo are noteworthy—but the real focus was that Coinbase Wallet has officially upgraded and renamed itself to Base App. This marks a strategic shift for Base from being a purely foundational infrastructure ('Superchain') to becoming a 'Super App' that integrates users, applications, and social features.
Strategic evolution from Superchain to Super App
Base has long emphasized that it is part of the Superchain vision, committed to becoming a reusable, scalable, and composable universal Ethereum L2. However, as the L2 track becomes increasingly homogenized, pure performance is no longer the only winning formula. The key to differentiated competition is who can effectively capture and convert traffic, building a complete user path. The Web3 world has long lacked a platform like WeChat or Telegram, where various applications independently guide users, resulting in inefficiencies and poor experiences.
To achieve this strategic transformation, Base has officially upgraded its brand from a single chain to an open stack, consisting of three synergistic components:
Base Chain: It remains the secure, fast, and low-cost Ethereum L2 that we know. With the launch of the Flashblocks module, its effective block time has been reduced to 200 milliseconds, increasing speed by tenfold and powering a large-scale on-chain economy.
Base Build: Providing builders with the tools and support needed to create the next generation of on-chain experiences, including a brand new dashboard to help teams build, grow their mini-apps, and profit from them.
Base App: It is not just a wallet; it is built on open protocols and serves as the entry point and front end for the entire ecosystem.
It can be said that the launch of the Base App is a key decision made by Base and Coinbase at the current stage of development. It no longer satisfies being just a place to deploy applications but hopes to become the first interface users see when entering the Web3 world. By controlling both the underlying public chain and the top-level entry, Base is building a solid moat for future industry competition. The battle for the Web3 entry point is thus being reignited.
Integrating social, creation, trading, and payments
The Base App is positioned as a 'universal application', aimed at breaking the current fragmentation of Web3 application functionalities by seamlessly integrating core features such as social interaction, content creation, asset trading, instant messaging, and everyday payments into a unified platform.
A brand new open social network
At the core of the application is an open social network. It is built on the decentralized social protocol Farcaster, which means users truly own their content and social graphs, and can freely take them to any other compatible applications without being locked into a single platform. This social network has the following innovative characteristics:
Content as assets, creation as profit: With the support of the Zora protocol, every post by users can be minted as an on-chain asset. Others can purchase, collect, or directly tip this content, allowing creators to earn directly from their creations from day one without relying on brand advertisements or a large fan base.
Social trading: Users can see in real-time which tokens their friends are buying and trading in the feed, and can follow their trades with one click, completing transactions without leaving the current interface, significantly lowering the threshold for discovering and participating in popular trades.
Participation equals reward: During events, top creators who post and actively engage in community interactions on the app will also receive weekly cash rewards, with all earnings directly traceable and manageable within the app.
Integration of everything, one-stop experience
The Base App aims to become a one-stop hub for users' on-chain activities:
Vast mini-apps: Hundreds of mini-apps are directly embedded in the information flow, covering various categories such as games, yield mining, prediction markets, etc. Users can easily experience, fix their favorite applications, and discover trending topics.
Seamless asset trading: The application integrates fast, smooth trading functions, supporting the buying and selling of millions of on-chain tokens while ensuring users always control their private keys and assets.
One-click transfer: Base now supports free USDC transfers via NFC technology, with the entire transfer process taking just a few seconds, and funds immediately reaching the recipient's account.
Personalized space: Users fully own their social profiles and can freely customize themes and appearance.
Hold to earn: Users can earn rewards of up to 4.1% APY simply by holding USDC in the app.
Integration of financial activities and social scenarios
The chat functionality of the app is supported by the XMTP protocol, achieving end-to-end encryption and decentralization, ensuring the privacy and anti-censorship of communications. More importantly, it deeply integrates financial activities with social scenarios:
Community and Sharing: Users can easily create group chats, manage conversations, and share their social content within chats.
Interacting with AI agents: This is a highly forward-looking feature. Users can converse with AI agents (like Bankr or Mamo) in a chat box using natural language, allowing them to execute transactions, send funds, or even balance portfolios. For example, a user could say 'Split the money from the last trip,' and the AI agent can automatically identify the objects, calculate the amount, and call the wallet to complete the payment. This shift from 'click operations' to 'natural language commands' greatly reduces the cognitive threshold for on-chain interactions.
Instant transfers in chat: Users can send or receive USDC based on the Base chain instantly and for free during conversations with friends.
Unveiling the powerful drive behind the Base App
The smooth user experience of Base App relies on significant innovations in the underlying architecture and the construction of a developer-friendly ecosystem.
Flashblocks launched, Base speed increased tenfold
On the eve of the launch event, Base officially launched the Flashblocks module developed in collaboration with Flashbots on the mainnet. This technological innovation avoids the traditional 'high-priced transaction queuing' phenomenon through a time-ordered transaction mechanism and segments high Gas transactions for fair distribution of block resources. Its most immediate effect is that Base's effective block time has been reduced from 2 seconds to 200 milliseconds, increasing speed by tenfold, making it the fastest EVM-compatible chain currently, even twice as fast as Solana. This speed has reached the 'smooth' standard of 100-300 milliseconds for Web2 application interactions, laying a solid foundation for complex on-chain interactions and instant feedback. Node providers including Alchemy, QuickNode, and Infura have all supported developers in integrating Flashblocks.
Base Account SDK: Universal identity and convenient payment
To empower developers, the original Coinbase Wallet SDK has also been upgraded to Base Account SDK. It provides developers with powerful tools needed to build outstanding applications:
Base Account: This is the on-chain account and identity layer that drives the Base App experience. It is built on the smart wallet platform and Basenames, providing users with a unified, self-custodial on-chain identity. A Base Account is automatically created when users register for the Base App, and it can be used across applications and chains.
Sign in with Base: Developers can easily integrate the 'Sign in with Base' feature into their applications through a new UI component, connecting to tens of thousands of existing active accounts with funds.
Base Pay: The SDK has added a payment module, offering a fast checkout service called Base Pay. It allows users to save personal information (like name, address, email) once and make one-click USDC payments at any participating merchant.
Sub Accounts: This feature is now activated on the mainnet, allowing applications to create independent sub-accounts for users, facilitating seamless in-app transactions while users can manage all application accounts from a unified interface.
From JPMorgan to Shopify, Base builds a global on-chain economy
Base's ambition goes far beyond creating an application; its ultimate goal is to build an open, efficient, borderless global on-chain economy. A recent series of significant collaborations is showcasing how this vision is accelerating into reality.
JPMorgan pilots deposit tokens on Base
Just before the launch event, banking giant JPMorgan announced it would conduct a proof of concept for a dollar deposit token (JPMD) on Base through its blockchain business division Kinexys. JPMD is supported 1:1 by dollar deposits and aims to provide its institutional clients with an almost instantaneous, low-cost, and 24/7 available on-chain payment channel. This milestone event marks the acceleration of traditional financial institutions embracing on-chain technology and demonstrates the potential of Base as a foundational platform for building trusted financial products.
Streamlining business payments: Deep collaboration with Shopify
The launch of Base Pay is closely tied to its collaboration with e-commerce giant Shopify. From the day of the launch event, millions of Shopify merchants can choose Base Pay as one of the payment methods for their stores, accepting USDC payments from global users. For merchants, they can automatically settle received USDC into local fiat currency without bearing foreign exchange costs. For U.S. consumers, using USDC payments in the future will also enjoy a 1% cashback. This collaboration directly brings on-chain payments into mainstream commercial scenarios.
Ecological cooperation in full bloom
In addition to the aforementioned giants, Base's ecosystem is also rapidly expanding:
Marketing Promotion: To celebrate the launch event, Base partnered with high-end health food store Erewhon to offer free co-branded juice to users holding the Base App at designated locations, connecting online and offline.
AI and Data: Coinbase has partnered with AI search engine startup Perplexity AI to provide real-time cryptocurrency data services.
DeFi Derivatives: Coinbase has absorbed the core team of the decentralized options protocol Opyn to enhance its on-chain derivatives suite.
Open Protocol: Deep integration with open protocols like Farcaster, Zora, XMTP, etc., is the cornerstone of Base App's openness.
From everything revealed at the 'A New Day One' launch event, Base is playing a big game. It integrates social interaction, identity, applications, and payments all on top of open underlying protocols, powered by Base Chain. As Coinbase Wallet engineering director Chintan Turakhia stated, 'When everything runs on a shared and open track, you will start with an infinite toolbox created by millions of builders.' A more open, free, and creative global economy is no longer a distant future; it is happening on Base. Currently, users can register via email to join the waiting list for early access to the Base App.