[Feature] Understanding Base and Optimism Superchain With 7 Questions

On February 23, 2023, the joint announcement on Twitter by Coinbase and Optimism finally revealed the mystery behind their collaboration.

It turns out that Coinbase and the Optimism Collective (the DAO managing Optimism) have teamed up to launch Base, a testnet based on the OP Stack.

With the launch of the Base testnet, Optimism also announced a major move - aiming to become not just an L2 chain, but a platform for L2 chains - Optimism superchain.

With 7 questions, Jinse Finance will help you understand Coinbase Base and Optimism superchain.

1.What is Base?

Base is incubated by Coinbase and is the second L2 deployed on the OP Stack, in addition to Optimism's mainnet, with the intention of becoming part of the Optimism superchain. The Coinbase Base team has become the second core development team for the OP Stack.

2.What is OP Stack?

OP Stack is a standardized, shared, and open-source development stack that supports Optimism and is currently maintained by the Optimism Collective. It is a set of software that supports Optimism, currently in the form of software behind the Optimism mainnet and eventually in the form of the Optimism superchain and its governance.

OP Stack primarily focuses on creating a shared, high-quality, fully open-source system for creating new L2 blockchains. By coordinating shared standards, the Optimism Collective can avoid duplicative construction in isolation.

3.What is Optimism superchain?

According to the Optimism Collective, the multi-chain world has its own challenges, especially the fragmentation of Ethereum L2. In order to achieve an Internet-scale user base for the Ethereum system, a unified L2 network needs to be established. Therefore, Optimism aims to become a platform for chains - the superchain. The Optimism superchain seeks to integrate previously isolated L2s into an interoperable and composable system. For example, Coinbase Base will work with the Optimism Collective to design and build a protocol that can sort multiple L2s and provide interoperability and composability between them through the OP Stack.

The short-term goal of the Optimism superchain is to upgrade the Optimism mainnet, Base, and other L2s to an initial superchain structure with shared bridges and sorting. The long-term goal is to develop into a large network, maximizing interoperability, sharing decentralized protocols, and standardizing its core primitives.

4.Why did Coinbase launch Base?

The launch of Base is within Coinbase's long-term plan. Its goal is to extend Ethereum through a powerful, interoperable web3 ecosystem, so that anyone, anywhere, can build decentralized applications or on-chain "Dapps" in a secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly way based on Base, bringing the next billion users to web3.

At the same time, Base is also the on-chain home for Coinbase's existing products, users, and assets. Dapps on Base can seamlessly integrate with Coinbase, easy fiat on-ramps, and access to the Coinbase ecosystem.

5.What is Coinbase's Plan?

As mentioned earlier, Base has been part of Coinbase's long-term plan. As early as 2016, Coinbase's plan was clear and consistent: to create an open financial system and increase global economic freedom by consciously going through four phases.

Phase 1: Protocol Development (1 million users)

New protocols such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are invented, and people start tinkering with them. Open-source communities and early adopters develop around each protocol to experiment with how to use them.

Phase 2: Digital Currency Exchanges (10 million users)

Coinbase begins here. Investment or speculation becomes the driving mechanism for payment networks. Creating secure and easy-to-use exchanges becomes a bridge for people to transfer between fiat currency and crypto currencies.

Phase 3: Public Interfaces for Crypto Currency Applications (100 million users)

To go beyond trading and investment, users and companies need a simple interface to start using crypto currencies and their applications. Countless applications have been built to make the crypto economy accessible to anyone, anywhere, including Coinbase, Coinbase Wallet, Metamask, Rainbow, and Trust Wallet.

Phase 4: "Dapps" that build an open financial system (1 billion users)

Existing financial systems now need to be recreated on open networks and made accessible globally. This is happening: USDC brings billions of dollars of on-chain revenue, cbETH allows holders to protect the financial system and earn rewards from anywhere, hundreds of Dapps allow countless individuals and institutions to transact at lower cost, with higher security and unprecedented access.

Coinbase has had countless conversations with internal teams and external collaborators on how to accelerate the fourth phase of their plan. The key point is that in order to achieve the scale, availability, and security needed for the final phase, they actually need to go back to the beginning and develop the underlying protocols that support end-user applications. They are starting by doing this on Ethereum, using Optimism to drive EIP-4844 and enable L2 rollups to expand, but that is not enough. Therefore, the Base was launched.

6.What cooperation will there be between Base and the Optimism Collective?

Accelerating activity on the superchain:

Base is the second L2 deployed on the OP Stack after the Optimism mainnet and intends to be part of the Optimism superchain. Base will bring Coinbase's on-chain products and user base into the Optimism superchain ecosystem, increase the activity of the Optimism superchain, and allow Coinbase users to seamlessly interact with Dapps and move assets throughout the ecosystem.

Adding value to the superchain:

A certain percentage of transaction fees will be provided to the Optimism Collective, making it a part of the Optimism superchain and providing funding for the core public product infrastructure of the Optimism superchain and the broader crypto economy.

Advancing the developer ecosystem:

We will continue to work closely with OP Labs and the Optimism Collective to make it easier for developers to build new L2s and rollups and deploy their applications on the Optimism superchain. For example, we will collaborate with the Optimism Collective to create primitives (such as for IDs) that can be used to join L2s on the Optimism superchain, including Base and the Optimism mainnet.

Building an interoperable crypto economy:

In the short term, both Base and the Optimism mainnet will operate as independent L2s, providing a set of products for the crypto economy, such as swaps, lending, and so on. In the long run, it is expected that use cases will be deployed on the Optimism mainnet or Base, allowing developers to deploy in the L2 that best suits their use case.

7.What is the road map of 2023?

In 2023, Base and the Optimism mainnet will progress from a phase 0 rollup to a phase 1 rollup, with significant levels of decentralization and trustlessness. To achieve this goal:

· At least one fault prover will be launched for the OP Stack, which will protect Base and the Optimism mainnet by using a set of validators to identify and challenge faults.

· The upgradability of Base and Optimism mainnet smart contracts will be decentralized and handed over to a security council with a decentralized legal quorum that is not controlled by any single entity.

· The initial version of the superchain will be launched, which can order transactions for Base, the Optimism mainnet, and any OP Stack rollup, protecting the rights of anyone participating in these ecosystems.

· Efforts will be made to push Base and the Optimism mainnet to the phase 2 rollup by 2024, with a level of decentralization and security comparable to Ethereum.