Title: Base Season: My Thesis
Author: ZENECA
Compiled by: Baihua Blockchain
In this article, I will share why I still believe Base is very important, the areas I am currently focusing on in Base, and how you can participate in it from an operational perspective. I will provide an overview of the ecosystem and share some indicators that make me more confident that the "Base era" is about to arrive.
However, before delving into the details, it is necessary to state some obvious things: Most of the content involved in this article, as well as the vast majority of projects in the current crypto market (especially those related to memecoins), have extremely high risks, huge bubbles, and almost everything may plummet 95%-100% from the current level. Like others, I am also trying to trade this market, and I will sell when I think the price is close to the peak, and gradually lock in profits during the price increase process. In fact, I have already realized part of the gains.
Don't be a stubborn "diamond hand" holder, and don't be unwilling to sell because of moral blackmail from others. Ultimately, you have to do what is best for yourself. If your investment has reached an amount that can change your life, then sell, cash out, and change your life.
I have seen too many people "sit back to the starting point" from the peak, so I want to point out these risks here first. The following are my personal views, which may be wrong, the timing may be off, or there may be other issues. The importance of "doing your own research" (DYOR) has never been more prominent.
Next, let's start with Coinbase and talk about why I am optimistic about Base.
1. Reason One: Coinbase is a Big Player
Coinbase is one of the largest and most influential cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, and is an important company in the crypto industry. Whenever a memecoin is listed on Coinbase, crypto investors around the world are excited, because they know that this usually means the price of the Token will (generally) rise. This is because Coinbase provides a convenient channel for ordinary users (or general crypto enthusiasts) to trade these Tokens.
Coinbase's mission is to increase global economic freedom and bring 1 billion people into the on-chain ecosystem. While they would be happy to have 1 billion users on any blockchain, it is clear that they are particularly eager to attract these users to their own Base chain.
I believe that most people still underestimate the power of Coinbase's marketing machine and the importance of the company as a whole.
As one of the largest trading platforms in the US, Coinbase not only occupies an important position in business, but also often represents the entire crypto industry in legal and political struggles.
Last year, when the SEC decided to sue Coinbase, it was one of the few moments in the crypto field where almost everyone was united under the same goal. There is nothing like a common enemy to inspire group cohesion. Of course, there were some opponents, but fuck the opponents, they are insignificant and hardly worth mentioning.
About Coinbase, I also want to add that the company seems to be full of sincerity from top to bottom, and the employees are all very outstanding. It's not that other trading platforms can't do this, but the atmosphere emanating from Coinbase is particularly positive.
In short, Coinbase is a very important player. They have their own Layer 2 blockchain, which will most likely also be a major event worth watching.
Speaking of Base, we can't help but mention Ethereum - a blockchain that everyone loves and hates. However, I believe the Ethereum era is also about to arrive...
2. Reason Two: The Ethereum Era
By the way, Ethereum is also a big player. I know that nowadays criticizing Ethereum seems to have become a popular trend on social media, but to be honest, I think these voices are just a few who shout louder on Twitter. The really influential people mostly don't spend all day on Twitter. Of course, this applies to all blockchains, but especially to Ethereum (partly because many people have already moved to Farcaster).
I won't deny that Ethereum has experienced some failures. Over the past 12-18 months, it has "lost" to Solana (SOL) in many ways. It is slow, has high fees, and the entire ecosystem appears fragmented and clumsy due to the many L2s (and L3s).
Even so, Ethereum is still the second largest blockchain by market capitalization, with a market capitalization nearly 4 times that of its other competitors.
Of the 328 blockchains tracked by DeFi Llama, Ethereum still accounts for more than 50% of the total locked-in value (TVL). What a "dead chain" (laughs).
Obviously, Ethereum's price performance this year has lagged behind almost all other cryptocurrencies. But I think this situation is about to change.
This is the ETH/BTC chart over the past about five years. Clearly, Ethereum's performance has not been ideal in the past two years! But anyone with even a little understanding of charts, markets, and investing will tell you that this is a buying opportunity, not a selling time.
18-24 months ago was when you should have used ETH to exchange for BTC or SOL.
I'm not saying you have to use BTC or SOL to exchange for ETH now, but it's certain that the timing now is much better than any time in the past few years.
Yes, yes, I'm going to mention this old saying again, but it's just so accurate and applicable. The best time to buy SOL was when the panic was most severe after the FTX collapse.
I have to admit that in this market, I reacted a bit late to the amazing performance of SOL (at least relatively speaking, I entered when SOL was around $40). And as a stubborn ETH bull, I may have held on longer than a qualified trader should have. But I have reasons for being bullish on ETH, many of which are mentioned in this article.
Many people's dissatisfaction with ETH mainly comes from the friction in using the chain, such as high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. L2 has solved many of these problems, and they are also catching up quickly in their own weak areas. So we come to...
3. Reason Three: Usage Friction is Rapidly Disappearing
An important reason for Solana's recent success is its focus on consumer applications and end-user experience. They try to minimize usage barriers, and it is undeniable that the threshold for ordinary people to use the Solana blockchain is much lower compared to other major blockchains. Low transaction fees and fast transaction speeds are certainly important, but things like mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom and applications like Moonshot have had a huge impact on user acquisition.
Add to that the popularity of memecoins, especially the heat of the Pump Fun protocol, as well as the network effects brought by these factors, the success is obviously not surprising.
But I think Base is seeing similar trends, or is already very close. For example, just today, Phantom announced that it will support Base:
Over the past few weeks, I've communicated with people in dozens of Discord/TG chat rooms, and I've heard countless times people say: "Ah, I only have SOL in my wallet, I don't know how to use Base."
I think this is just the beginning, and we will see more and more protocols and applications start to support Base, and there will also be more native Base applications.
In addition, many people are still haunted by the high Ethereum gas fees and the terrible user experience of MetaMask in 2021, but they haven't experienced the convenience of interacting with Base using Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, or the native Coinbase Wallet (which earns 4.7% native yield on the USDC it holds, which is quite good).
4. Reason Four: Strong Team
When investing in traditional companies or projects, I have always believed in betting on excellent talent. And Base has a group of very capable and extremely reliable team members who are working their magic.
Brian Armstrong casually met with Trump to discuss cryptocurrency policy. By the way, Brian is truly an extraordinary figure, and you can read this article from 2020 (yes, sorry, I'm asking you to read more) and reflect on what the world was like at that time, as well as the political stances of most major tech companies, and then compare it to the completely different approach taken by Brian in leading Coinbase.
And then there's the face of Base, Jesse Pollak, who is also leading Base and the Coinbase Wallet.
I've actually saved dozens of tweets because I'm looking for some tweets I can post here to showcase his personal traits, especially how he's made Base what it is today. Browsing his Twitter timeline is simply endless fun. I recommend you check it out yourself, but for the lazy ones, that's 99% of you (if I were in your shoes, I would be too), here are a few of my favorite tweets:
Jesse is on a 21-day global tour, visiting builders and leaders, spreading the good news:
About trying to break into Instagram and TikTok:
About understanding meme culture (recommended to watch the video):
And there's more. The above are just two outstanding individuals working to achieve Base's goals. I feel quite confident in supporting this team.
5. Reason Five: Excellent Data Performance
The data shows that activity on Base has increased significantly, and capital inflows have also been considerable. For me, the most important indicators in predicting whether a chain is likely to achieve major success are: 1) the number of builders/developers creating applications; 2) whether capital is flowing into the chain.
Looking back over the past three months, Base's net capital inflows have been almost on par with Solana:
Looking back over the past week, Base's performance has far surpassed all other platforms:
Trading volume has also been steadily increasing, with a recent uptick:
Over the past few days, many Base AI agents have gained a lot of attention on Twitter:
Overall, it's clear that traffic and attention are moving towards Base. Whether it can be sustained or is just a temporary fluctuation remains to be seen. Many claim this is just temporary, and Solana will maintain most of the attention this cycle. I obviously disagree, but I'm not so arrogant to think I'm definitely right and everyone else is wrong.
The data looks good, but the data may be temporary.
6. Reason Six: Airdrop Speculation
Let me be clear, this is purely speculation, I have no inside information and don't know if there will be a Base Token. They have already stated that there will be no Token, but similarly, Optimism and many other chains have made similar promises.
However, with the significant changes in the legal and regulatory environment, I don't completely rule out the possibility of an airdrop at some point in the future.
That said, I won't be putting too much effort into this, as I personally see it as icing on the cake rather than something I'm always focused on. I suggest just using the chain and doing some experiments or trials, as this is usually the best way to participate in airdrops when the protocol does eventually launch one.
Alright, those are my six reasons for being bullish on Base and believing that Base Szn may be upon us. Now let's dive into some areas worth paying attention to and where I've been spending time on Base:
7. The Base Chain Ecosystem
1) Virtuals Protocol
You've probably already heard about Virtuals, if not through my tweets/retweets, then perhaps through other discussions on the timeline. In simple terms, Virtuals is a platform that provides a launchpad for on-chain AI agents.
In their own words:
Over the past few months, it has seen a slow but steady adoption, with a recent uptick a few weeks ago and an exponential growth over the past few days.
I don't need to tell you that AI is currently a hot topic in the crypto space and is likely to be a mainstream topic and industry for the foreseeable future, if not forever. We've already seen meme coins like GOAT and ZEREBRO exploding on Solana, and many other projects performing well.
Currently, the market capitalizations of the top AI Tokens and agents on Virtuals are still only a small fraction of the giants on Solana, but if you look at the capital flows and expect an ETH season + a Base season, I think focusing on the Virtuals ecosystem will be one of the best places to be.
The two Tokens I'm personally most bullish on and hold the most of are AIXBT and VADER, in addition to the native Token VIRTUAL. I hold Tokens for around 20 agents on the platform, and there are many more that I think will perform well, given that they already have significant market caps.
You can find new Virtual AI agent Tokens being released (and you can also release your own Token). I recommend reading their full whitepaper to get a comprehensive understanding of the protocol.
Additionally, this is a good thread from last month that provides a high-level overview of Virtuals in an easy-to-understand way: link.
2) Farcaster
Base and Farcaster are closely related. While Farcaster supports and uses multiple chains, Base is currently almost devouring the entire world. As you can see from this chart, for most of this year, Base has accounted for 60% to 80% of all chain transactions by Farcaster users, and this figure has recently reached over 95%.
Regarding Farcaster, two recent integrations have garnered a lot of attention, namely clanker and anoncast.
Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that allows users to deploy Tokens, and anyone can simply @ mention it to request it to create a Token for them. It provides liquidity pool funding for the Tokens from its own resources and generates some fees for the creators. People have viewed it as the "pump fun" of Base, although I don't think it's a completely equivalent comparison.
This website is a good place to track the release of new clanker Tokens.
Anoncast is a really cool technology that allows people to post content on Farcaster and even Twitter completely anonymously using zk-proof technology (which I wrote about last year). You can post content through this website and need to hold an anon Token (as a utility for the tags).
As developers and experimenters try out various new implementations, things are moving quickly, and it's worth keeping an eye on and delving deeper into the developments of Farcaster.
I recommend watching this interview where ThreadGuy interviewed one of the co-founders of Farcaster, Dan Romero.
3) "Old" Coins, Memes, and Traditional Memes
While the current focus is largely on the two areas mentioned above, especially the AI-related Tokens that have captured most of the attention, I think it's also worth keeping an eye on some of the older coins that have been around on Farcaster for a while and have some loyal communities.
There are too many to list, but by checking the Base page on Dexscreener and sorting by market cap, you'll find some decent old-school Memecoins.
I speculate that if we do indeed see a Base Season, there may be a moment where the attention shifts from AI/Farcaster content to cute animals and traditional memes (or perhaps they may occur in parallel).
While the Virtuals ecosystem has recently experienced an explosive growth, many of these older coins have also seen declines during the same time period. Recalling the old saying "be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful," now may be a good time to observe those areas that people are less focused on.
4) Other noteworthy points
I had planned to write a full paragraph here, but I just saw an amazing tweet that covers 10 cool apps to try, 10 ways to earn on-chain yields, 10 communities worth joining, and 10 articles worth reading. So, since that's the case, I won't ramble on, and you can just check out that tweet.
https://x.com/davidtsocy/status/1861507879792189769?s=46&t=sQ0QVUQyoiZQeVyh-DXZpg
There are countless other cool things being built on Base, most of which I obviously can't cover. The things mentioned above are just what I've been personally focused on over the past few weeks, but I'd encourage you to explore and find the areas that interest you.
Alright, those are the main areas I've been focused on, and let me wrap up with a few thoughts on the logistics side.
I've received a lot of questions about how to get started operating on Base, so here's a quick onboarding guide / some tips:
If you have funds in your Ethereum wallet, you can bridge them to Base using platforms like Relay or Bungee. These are very user-friendly and low-cost, with the bridging process typically taking just a minute or so.
If you have SOL funds in your wallet, you can also use Relay to bridge, or you can choose the bridging option directly in your Phantom wallet.
If you want to trade on Base, you can do it manually like me, with 90% of the time spent trading by hand, but there are also some trading bots that support Base, and I imagine more will emerge soon. Two of the most popular trading bots are Bull X and Photon (disclosure: these are affiliate links).
The main decentralized exchanges for buying and selling Tokens on Base are Aerodrome and Uniswap. Personally, I prefer using the DeFi aggregator LlamaSwap, as it can find the cheapest trading routes and get you the best rates.
Trading Virtuals Tokens is a bit different, as all AI agents can only use the native VIRTUAL Token for transactions. The easiest way is through their website, but you can also use LlamaSwap to swap for Virtuals Tokens, just make sure to select KyberSwap as the decentralized exchange.
If you're looking for a wallet that supports all Base/EVM Tokens, I personally use and recommend Rabby, and I've also heard good things about Rainbow Wallet. Coinbase has its own wallet as well, but to be honest, I think the other two are more feature-rich (or maybe I just haven't used the Coinbase wallet enough).
8. Conclusion: Final thoughts on SOL vs. Base, and general perspectives on blockchain competition
I've always felt that the fierce competition between blockchains is actually quite unnecessary. I tend to view "competing chains" as friendly rivals, like the US and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand. We poke fun at each other, laugh about Solana's occasional issues, Ethereum's sky-high gas fees, and Cardano being, well, Cardano.
But ultimately, if you're here to make money (which I'd guess 99% of people are), you should keep an open mind, experiment, and go with the flow.
If you're more concerned about the future of finance, about decentralization and censorship-resistance, rather than just making money, then by all means, stick to your guns. In this space, you'll encounter all sorts of extremist views: Bitcoin maximalists who think everything else is harmful to the industry; Ethereum maximalists who view Solana as a scourge; and Solana maximalists who see Ethereum and Base as the scourge.
There are even some hardcore Bitcoin supporters who hate ETFs and MicroStrategy, while others love them.
I say all this to convey—no matter which side you're on, you'll encounter a group of people who think you're an idiot, that your views are idiotic. Honestly, that's just life, and you can let it affect you, or you can, like me, just embrace it, go with the flow, follow the money, follow the developers, follow the attention, and most importantly: follow your own curiosity.
I'd encourage you to try that approach as well. The most valuable information (Alpha) isn't in following my curiosity, my posts, or anyone else's footsteps, but in pursuing your own curiosity, diving in, and thinking independently.
