Crypto: How Socialfi, Memecoins And AI Pushed Base To The Top Of The L2 Ladder
Base rode SocialFi, memecoins and AI agents to the top of Ethereum’s layer-2 ladder before turning inward to rebuild its core stack.
Base will transition to a unified, internally maintained stack, expected to be its biggest architectural shift since launch.
After debuting in 2023 as a rollup built on Optimism’s OP Stack, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer 2 is now consolidating its software into an in-house distribution, which can unlock faster upgrades and greater autonomy over its technical roadmap.
It has been exactly three years since Base launched its testnet. The network has experienced SocialFi explosions and ridden its own memecoin wave. It even went through a phase that both fascinated and unnerved Crypto Twitter as AI agents began transacting on its chain.
Base’s mainnet opened to builders in July 2023, and users followed in August. The period after Coinbase cut the ribbon was promoted as “Onchain Summer.” In the first week, Base attracted 700,000 new users, who brought with them about $242 million in inflows.
Friend.tech was the headline act of Coinbase’s summer festival. It was a social app that allowed users to buy and sell access to their connections. The loudest voices on Crypto Twitter tested the industry’s newest toy, which also attracted the rich and famous outside the community. In less than two weeks after launching, it generated over $1 million in daily fees, surpassing Bitcoin at the time.
By the end of August, fees and transaction volume had tanked, and the platform was declared “dead.”
A little over a year later, the team relinquished control of the project by ditching the admin rights of its smart contracts.
The memecoin frenzy became one of the defining crypto stories in recent years, drawing in political figures and public personalities. Eventually, it prompted the US Securities and Exchange Commission to state that such tokens fall outside the scope of securities laws.
Solana is the go-to blockchain for memecoins. Its data shows the memecoin boom gaining momentum in late 2023, when its daily active addresses began climbing toward Ethereum’s levels. In March 2024, Solana decisively surpassed Ethereum on that metric when Base users started showing some post-Friend.tech signs of life.
Source: CoinTelegraph
