Coinbase’s Layer 2 Ethereum solution, Base, has been generating buzz in the crypto ecosystem. In a Base Discord call today, Jesse Pollak, who leads Coinbase’s protocol efforts, shared insights into Base’s plans for the next few years. Pollak emphasized three main priorities: decentralization, scalability, and growth, while also highlighting the importance of collaboration with other L2s in scaling Ethereum.
“In 2023, 2024 our priority is decentralization of base. We’re working really hard on that,” said Pollak. This focus on decentralization aligns with Base’s commitment to be open-source, permissionless, and accessible to developers worldwide. Pollak continued, “After that, the priority is increasing scalability of base by lowering fees.”
Base aims to make transactions more affordable for users and developers alike. Pollak mentioned a major update to Ethereum, EIP-4844, also known as Proto-Danksharding. EIP-4844 introduces a new kind of transaction type to Ethereum, which accepts “blobs” of data to be persisted in the beacon node for a short period. These changes are forward-compatible with Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, and blobs are small enough to keep disk use manageable. Pollak explained that users can expect to see a reduction in price from the “10-50c range, to the 1-5c range, and we think that reduction in cost is really important for more people to build more applications on chain.”
Regarding the third priority, Pollak underscored growth as the key to bringing crypto into the mainstream. “Our belief is with base we’re going to be able to make it really easy for developers to build out the ecosystem. And those devs will bring the users on chain, with things like savings products, stablecoins, borrowing and lending, and also things like social, gaming, NFTs.”
The Base community has shown significant enthusiasm, with Pollak stating, “We’ve seen so much enthusiasm from the community, there’s 1100 people on this call right now, we’ve gotten 150,000 followers on Twitter in just a few weeks.” He believes that this support demonstrates the potential for Base to help usher in the next era of crypto adoption, attracting a million developers and a billion users on-chain.
Lastly, Pollak emphasized the value of collaboration over competition among Ethereum L2 solutions. “We’re not thinking about Base as competitive with other L2s, we think of Base as being collaborative with other L2’s for scaling Ethereum.”
Armed with these priorities, Base is poised to continue its impressive trajectory even within its testnet era, shaping the future of the Ethereum ecosystem and the broader crypto space.