This week, big news rolled out in the layer-2 blockchain space as Coinbase, the second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 blockchain.
In the past, Coinbase has focused on the trading and exchange side of its business, but this blockchain is switching up the script for the company as it moves into the decentralized ecosystem.
In an effort to expand further into the developer space, Coinbase is building Base to make it “dead easy” for developers to build dApps and for users to access those dApps through Coinbase products. Jesse Pollak, lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase, told sources
“Our goal is to bring about phase 4 of Coinbase’s master plan: to bring a billion users into the crypto economy,” Pollak added.
And the new blockchain is hitting the ground running as a number of crypto organizations like Chainlink, Magic Eden, Animoca Brands, and The Graph have committed to building on its platform.
This news comes just two days after Coinbase announced its fourth-quarter earnings for 2022, which beat Wall Street’s revenue expectations of $581.2 million. Although the company generated $605 million in total revenue, it was down sharply from $2.49 billion in the year-ago quarter.
The cryptocurrency exchange explained that Bazo is open source and uses Optimism’s OP Stack. Coinbase said it is also working with Optimism. “We see this toolkit as an open platform that anyone can contribute to, share, and extend to help scale the crypto economy,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
Initially, Coinbase will have more control, but Base’s vision will become completely unacceptable over time. The base will move from Phase 0 to Phase 1 in 2023, with Phase 2 assembly in 202.
“According to the announcement. The blog post further emphasizes that Coinbase “has no plans to issue a new domain.” Although Bazo is a separate network, it is powered by Ethereum and uses Ethereum’s underlying security.
Coinbase also announced the creation of the Base Ecosystem Fund, which will support startup projects working with Base as long as they meet the company’s investment criteria. Like many L2 platforms, Bazo offers lower fees than the price of e-commerce Ethereum. This week, ETH fees are higher than usual, and the lower-fee L2 protocol Arbitrum surpassed Ethereum’s daily transaction volume.
“Base offers full EVM equivalence at a fraction of the cost and is committed to advancing the developer platform,” explains a blog post describing L2 Base. Following Coinbase’s announcement, L2 scale network Optimism’s native token rose 7.4% in relation to the US dollar. Optimism recently announced plans to upgrade its network in March.
When Coinbase launched the Basic testnet, people complained on social media about the rough platform. Coinbase Web3 developer Roberto Bayardo explained that the issue has been resolved, noting that many people have connected. “We are leaving the contracts under review for now,” Bayardo added.
Web3 world
Sam Bankman-Fried faces new criminal charges for unlawful political contributions.
According to a new filing from the Southern District of New York attorney’s office, former FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) now faces four additional counts of fraud, bringing his total to 12 charges. With these new charges, the former crypto wunderkind has been accused of defrauding the Federal Elections Committee (FEC), along with additional counts related to wire fraud and money laundering.
Digging into Coinbase’s better-than-expected Q4 results:
Coinbase’s fourth-quarter earnings results show alternative revenue sources may be a key factor for exchanges as the exchange saw trading volumes fall but other nontrading areas rise. We dove into a number of questions we wanted to answer, including queries relating to the company’s revenue mix, consumer activity, and ability to defend its fee take rate during the present-day crypto downturn.
Google Cloud collaborates with Tezos blockchain to provide web3 technology to its customers.
Through Tezos’ corporate baking program, new and existing Google Cloud customers will be able to build web3 applications as well as deploy nodes and indexers on Tezos’ protocol. This means companies and developers alike can leverage Tezos blockchain technology alongside Google Cloud’s infrastructure. In general, Google Cloud plans to continue partnering with “key players in the web3 ecosystem” to keep growing innovation for open source technologies, according to James Tromans, engineering director for web3 at Google Cloud.
The creator of NBA Top Shot is facing a securities lawsuit.
Dapper Labs, the company behind many popular NFT collectible projects, will face a lawsuit accusing it of selling unregistered securities. A class-action lawsuit was first filed against Dapper Labs in 2021. The company filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit before trial. And yet, as Coindesk spotted, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero denied the request, which means that the case will go forward.
The SEC charges Terraform Labs and its founder, Do Kwon, with defrauding investors.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the collapsed blockchain firm and stablecoin operator Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon with defrauding U.S. investors who purchased the digital assets Terra USD and Luna. The SEC accused Kwon and the Singapore-based crypto firm of offering and selling an interconnected suite of crypto asset securities, “many in unregistered transactions,” from April 2018 to May 2022, among other things.
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