On July 13th, the Layer 2 network Base, launched by Coinbase, opened its mainnet to developers. Some tools for developers are now available on the Base mainnet. Currently, although the mainnet is operational, it has not been officially released to users. The Base mainnet is expected to be officially launched in early August.

Currently, there are already some basic ecosystem projects and assets on Base. Today, the meme token bald on Base has skyrocketed, causing a lot of discussions in the community.

How to participate in trading before the official release of Base?

L2BEAT data shows that the total TVL (Total Value Locked) on Base has exceeded $10 million, currently reaching $10.44 million, with a 7-day increase of 1,024.81%.

Currently, the Base mainnet has not been officially released to the public. You may wonder how a project that hasn't even released its mainnet can attract funding.

According to the Base official documentation, the official bridge is currently only connected to the testnet and cannot be used to connect to the Base mainnet. However, users can still deposit funds to L2 by manually transferring to the contract. (You can add the Base network to your wallet quickly from chainlist.)

Users can transfer ETH to the following contract address to bridge ETH from the Ethereum mainnet to Base:

0x49048044D57e1C92A77f79988d21Fa8fAF74E97e
It's important to note that this contract can only receive ETH and should not be used to send any other assets. Currently, this address is only applicable to the Ethereum mainnet and cannot receive assets from other chains.

Which projects in the Base ecosystem are worth paying attention to?

The most prominent project in the Base ecosystem currently is BALD, the leading memetic asset that has grown rapidly. The project has been live for less than 24 hours, and DEXScreener data shows that its FDV has already surpassed $40 million, approximately $40.9 million. The liquidity has also reached $15.6 million.

And when we search on Twitter for BALD, we also found some interesting phenomena. Some suspected bot accounts are quickly and frequently posting the same copy. And most of these accounts have not posted any other tweets.

Except for BALD, there is a lack of other assets on Base.

Currently, Base only has one active swap trading, which is LeetSwap. On-chain data shows that LeetSwap has executed over 40,000 transactions, making it the second most active contract on the Base chain. In addition, the contract with the highest interaction volume is the commemorative NFT of Base, with over 90,000 transactions.

(Data source: blockscout)

And on LeetSwap, the assets are also relatively single. Except for the meme leader BALD, there are only two projects that have taken shape. LeetSwap's native token LEET has a FDV of about $23 million. The BRIAN project from burningbrian has a FDV of about $710,000. The remaining currencies are either of small market value (less than $500,000) or have low liquidity pools (less than $100,000).

Not officially released yet, still in progress

According to the official release plan previously announced, Base will soon be officially released in early August.

By checking their official Twitter account, we can see that Base has been conducting intensive promotion activities. Recently, they have also announced several ecosystem partners who will be "doing things" on Base. In the past half month alone, projects such as Blast API, QuickNode, Blockdaemon, thirdweb, Safe, The Graph, and others have announced that they are now live on the Base mainnet.

However, a closer observation reveals that these projects are all infrastructure-type projects that provide developers with more comprehensive tools and support. But such infrastructure projects have a strong "reinventing the wheel" nature. Currently, Base lacks direct products targeting end-users, resulting in a situation where there are more "wheels" than "cars".

(Most of the listed dApps have not been officially launched)

In a market environment where projects are scarce and assets are in short supply, it is not surprising that Base, a project with a golden spoon background, has encountered the situation of Meme flying high.

After the official release of Base in August, will the Base ecosystem see truly "heavyweight" projects, or will it become the next target for short-lived speculation without much value accumulation?