AL #020: How Coinbase created a movement

The history of "onchain summer" and the spectacular launch of Base.

Aug 22, 2023

While both the Worldcoin and Base protocol launches involved the significant challenge of being led by a billionaire, the sentiment couldn't be more different.

Worldcoin was met with skepticism and dystopian comparisons despite overcoming a significant hardware and ZK engineering challenge.

While Base had perhaps the fastest bootstrapping of an L2 we have observed so far (already over $200M bridged) even though it was built largely on pre-existing open source technology (The OP Stack).

I wanted to highlight the timeline of key things that happened during Base's launch and highlight what they got right.

I’ll start with the summary and leave the timeline for people who are excited about the play-by-play.

Summary

Here’s what Base did well (among other things):

Onboarded developers an entire week before regular users
Were incredibly transparent with the community (1-on-1 streams, etc.)
Heavily incentivized non-financial and non-speculative use cases, appealing to collectors gamers with the strong theme of “bringing everyone onchain”
Used NFTs instead of tokens to incentivize actions both for developers and users
Noticed, embraced and later led a wider mission and culture (“onchain summer”), playing down the benefits and successes of the network itself
Appealed to the prevailing sentiment (expectation of a bull market)
Announced collaborations with Optimism and committed sequencer fees to public goods
Collaborated with leading brands: Zora, Optimism, ThirdWeb, Parallel, Nouns

So what can I build on Base?

In terms of positioning, Base is carving out a strong niche among L2s:

There’s clear evidence that Coinbase can drive distribution
Focus on non-financial use cases will appeal to teams in that category
Comprehensive tool support from day 1 for builders
Stability & security we've come to expect from Coinbase
Future access to customers due to proximity to Coinbase fiat on-ramp

It may not be the best place to build a complex options DEX but they're not trying to be everything (yet) and that's a good thing.

The timeline

Here's a masterclass in doing a summer-long launch:

May 15

Jacob Horne defines the term “onchain”:

Unchain
/ˈɒntʃeɪn/
adjective
(of an object, activity or service) available on or performed using Ethereum or other blockchain.
adverb
1. by means of Ethereum or other blockchain.
creators would rather put their content onchain than online.
2. in or into the imagination.
that artist went completely onchain over the past couple of months.

May 16

1M of wallets deploy on Base testnet to claim an NFT.