On August 9th, Coinbase launched its highly anticipated Ethereum layer 2 blockchain called Base with the goal of “making Ethereum accessible to everyone”. In its first 11 days, Base would set the record for fastest layer 2 to reach 1 million unique addresses. A month after that, Base would become the most active layer 2 by transaction volume with 8.1 million weekly transactions. For the week, not only did Base have more transactions than older, established layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism, it also had more transactions than all of Ethereum too. Incredibly impressive for a blockchain that’s been on mainnet less than 2 months.
The meteoric rise of Base reiterates an exciting trend we’re seeing in blockchain technology, which is consolidation of activity around specific ecosystems. Consolidation is ultimately a good thing as it attracts more developers who build more applications that can then bring in more users. This is what happened in mobile over a decade ago with consolidation around iOS / Android. In many ways, Ethereum has become the blockchain equivalent of Android, which is the dominant mobile platform that has innovative partners like Samsung creating more opportunities. Ethereum is not just the dominant crypto platform, but also has innovative partners like Base creating even more opportunities to build for its ecosystem.
Build on Base
At Cymbal, we’re excited to continue building on Ethereum by now adding support for the Base blockchain! You can now use our human readable block explorer to discover realtime information and insights on over 900k wallets, 12k NFT projects, and 75 million tokens that we’re tracking on Base.
To get started, set the blockchain toggle at the top of the screen to Base to start exploring the new layer 2 like a total pro. And all this data is also being processed by Cymbal AI, so you will be able to read summaries and explanations about all of this Base activity in conversational English.
Browse popular Base projects including friend.tech, discover who are the top Base wallets and what they are up to, and even view heatmaps to help you visualize Base activity. You can also access our Base data within your Discord server through Cymbal Bot, our free NFT sales bot that is installed on 3k servers.
Basecamp Royale
It’s baaaack! To celebrate bringing Base to the Cymbal block explorer, we’re also bringing back Royale, our onchain NFT powered sweepstakes, in a brand new version called Basecamp Royale. Basecamp Royale is a free, interactive survival raffle powered by NFTs minted on Base, where one lucky person will have a chance to win $10,000 if they can survive. Check out our video below:
To join in on the fun, go to https://cymbal.xyz/basecamp starting today October 13th at 9am, connect your Base wallet (Coinbase recommended) and Twitter account, and then mint a free NFT ticket (which we’re calling a Basecamp). Tickets (or Basecamps) will be available to mint for a few days until October 16th at 6am PT and are limited to 1 Basecamp per Base wallet and Twitter account. You can also buy extra Basecamp NFTs on OpenSea to increase your chances of surviving.
Then on October 16th, the Royale will begin and Basecamps will be eliminated at random over the course of the next 5 days. When a Basecamp is eliminated, the NFT metadata will change to reflect the eliminated state. Eliminations will continue until only a single player remains, and that lucky survivor will win $10,000 in USDC.
Throughout the Royale, you can follow the elimination action in real time on Cymbal, in our Discord server, or on Twitter (@cymbalxyz). On Cymbal, you can view everyone that’s playing through our interactive map, and also see interesting stats and rankings about their onchain NFT activity, all powered by the Cymbal block explorer.
Visit Cymbal.xyz today to both explore the Base blockchain with the Cymbal block explorer, and also interact with the Base blockchain through the Basecamp Royale game. Whether you just want to learn and understand Base, or play and interact with Base, Cymbal will be there to make it fun and easy every step of the way!
