This summer, Ethereum scaling solutions have exploded in popularity. After years of research and development, Ethereum has a thriving ecosystem of Layer 2 (L2) networks, applications, and users. The Uniswap Protocol has deployed across several of these L2s, and the Uniswap app currently supports four of them, with more on the way.
We've explored Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon in previous posts. Today, we're looking at the Base ecosystem. Base is an L2 rollup incubated by Coinbase and built with the OP Stack, which we covered in our Optimism blog post. Base mainnet opened for everyone last month and already has over $350 million in total value locked and an average of 70,000 daily active addresses. By using a standardized tech stack, Base has made it easy for developers to quickly deploy dapps, like Uniswap, onto Base. In just a few short weeks, Uniswap has already done $250 million in volume over 450,000 swaps.
Building on top of the OP stack is a big win for the interoperability of the L2 ecosystem. Together with Optimism, Base is working towards the vision of the "Superchain"- a horizontally scalable network of chains that will jointly scale Ethereum. This is the first time a centralized, publicly traded company is launching a permissionless blockchain and will have to navigate the dynamics around centralization, interoperability, and security. While Coinbase is currently supporting and maintaining internal infrastructure to keep Base online in the preliminary phases, Base aims to gradually decentralize.
Base aims to make "onchain the next online" and onboard the next billion users onchain. Since its mainnet launch, many leading dapps, as well as unique onchain experiments, have found a home on Base. Among them are:
- Friend.tech, one of the most popular social apps on Base with thousands of daily users
- BasePaint, which was inspired by Reddit's r/place game. Each day, hundreds of artists create a single piece together
- Blackbird, a restaurant loyalty platform that unlocks rewards for repeat visitors
Base is a sandbox for new and novel onchain experiments. But to get your hands dirty, you need a wallet. One that makes it easy to connect and start using dapps on Base. At Uniswap Labs, we've built our self-custodial wallet as a friendly gateway into the Base ecosystem and other L2s. Our fiat on-ramp lets you go directly from your bank to Base without bridging funds. Once in the app, you can seamlessly switch to Base and use WalletConnect to discover your new favorite dapp!
Uniswap is encouraging users to go onchain and explore L2s as part of #ScalingSummer. To join our educational quests, click here