Original title: "Base Social Protocol Kingdom: Massive Users and Billions of TVL Under Consumer Applications"

Original source: IOSG Ventures

TL, DR

· Background: Base's on-chain data and ecology have shown significant growth recently. We believe that this is due to the support from all aspects: the Cancun upgrade has greatly reduced L2 fees and user interaction costs; backed by Coinbase, funds and user projects are fully supported and delivered, and Coinbase ventures and first-class funds are very active in investing in the Base ecosystem; achieving a win-win strategy with OP Superchain;

· Base focuses on unique social and consumer applications, hoping that it will become a traffic grabber to capture users. This article focuses on the social and consumer application ecosystem of Base, and divides some of the hottest projects into multiple categories such as social/community and user loyalty management/art and NFT/casual games, and introduces some of its projects;

· Summary: Base is less likely to issue coins under compliance and regulatory requirements, and has achieved ecological prosperity without using token incentives. With a good infrastructure background, Base's consumer applications and social ecology are expected to onboard more new users and achieve Mass Adoption.

Background: Cancun Upgrade and EIP4844, L2 Fees Are Significantly Reduced

With the completion of the Cancun upgrade, L2 has benefited greatly from it. The most relevant proposal for L2 in the Cancun upgrade is the EIP4844 proposal. EIP-4844 introduces a new data storage structure: Blob, which is specifically used to store transaction data submitted by L2 to L1. After the introduction, L2 transaction data is directly submitted to Blob for storage, which can be fully downloaded by consensus nodes and deleted after only a short delay, reducing unnecessary storage burden. This means that the introduction of Blob will greatly reduce L2 transaction fees. At the same time, Blob is equivalent to additional block space for L2, and L2 transaction throughput will also be significantly improved. EIP-4844 is essentially a transitional upgrade to prepare for the future to achieve full Danksharding (the last part of Ethereum's "Quiet" phase upgrade).

The data availability provided on the Ethereum main chain is Calldata (which can be understood as the data generated in the contract transaction call), and the data returned from Layer 2 to Layer 1 is stored in Calldata. In addition, for security reasons, Calldata requires Gas for each step of execution, which results in a high Gas cost. However, the transaction data in Calldata is not very useful after verification. Long-term data can also be downloaded for verification, and it does not even need to be transmitted to the execution layer. Before the Cancun upgrade, taking the average transaction fee history of the OP chain as an example, nearly 80% of the fees came from L1 data fees. Taking the cost of interaction on the Base chain as an example, the Gas fee of Swap was reduced from US$0.59 to US$0.01 before and after the Cancun upgrade, which is about 1.6% of the previous fee. The Gas fee of the sending function was reduced from US$0.178 to US$0.003, which is about 2% of the previous fee. EIP4844 reduces the cost of Base to a level that can compete with Solana when the network is relatively idle.

source: welovetheblobs.xyz

With the substantial reduction in L2’s Gas fee, the Base chain has seen a substantial increase in TVL and on-chain activities (the green dots in the figure indicate the time when the Base mainnet was launched and Blob began to be used). In the past thirty days, the chain has recorded more than 64 million interactions. Currently, its TVL has exceeded US$500 million, a record high, making it the second largest L2 after OP and Arbitrum.

Source:https://l2beat.com/scaling/projects/base

Full support from Coinbase

Base, as L2 built by the Coinbase team, is backed by the largest listed exchange in the United States and has unique advantages in all aspects. One of the biggest advantages of the Base chain is that it is backed by Coinbase's huge user base and strong asset accumulation, so Coinbase only needs to build a chain to connect the Base chain with the Coinbase exchange and wallet ecosystem. On March 27, Max Branzburg, vice president of Coinbase, posted on social media that "In the future, Coinbase will store more corporate and customer USDC balances on Base. This enables Coinbase to manage and protect customer funds at lower fees and faster settlement times without affecting the Coinbase user experience. Coinbase is happy to continue to move its business to the chain and hopes that other companies will follow Coinbase's example."

Recently, Coinbase Wallet launched the AA wallet (http://smart-wallet.xyz). Ordinary users no longer need cumbersome operation steps. They can directly use mobile phones or computer devices, touchid, Google accounts to generate accounts, and can also directly connect to Coinbase accounts, which lays the foundation for the Base chain to attract users and funds on a large scale.

Coinbase Ventures is also very active in investing in the Base ecosystem. Many projects in its portfolio choose to build the ecosystem on the Base chain. Base Foundation is also very active, investing in and incubating dozens of projects in various tracks such as social and Defi in batches. Thanks to Coinbase's position in the industry and the network effect of Coinbase Ventures, many Base ecosystem applications have also been sought after and favored by the primary market, such as Farcaster, FriendTech, etc., all of which have well-known capital support. Institutions such as Paradigm, a16z, Multicoin, DragonFly, Variant Funds, and 1confirmation are also very active in Base ecosystem investment.

Hyperchain Strategy: Win-win with OP

"Hyperchain" is an L2 network. OP Chain is a single chain in the hyperchain. Regardless of its specific attributes, if it is formally managed by the Optimism Collective, it is considered an OP chain and is therefore part of the hyperchain, sharing security, communication layers, and open source technology stacks with each other. But unlike the multi-chain design, the OP chain is standardized and designed to be used as an interchangeable resource, which will enable developers to build applications that target the entire hyperchain and abstract the underlying chain on which the application runs.

· Base and OP have reached a win-win strategic cooperation:

· Base promises to contribute 2.5% of the total revenue of the Base sorter to OP, and if it exceeds 2.5%, 15% of the total profit of Base will be directly contributed to OP.

In return, OP allows Base to participate in the ecological construction and has the "opportunity" to obtain 2.75% of the total supply of OP tokens.

Base chain built on OP Stack is currently maintained by Coinbase, which will be gradually decentralized in the future. According to DeFiLlama data, the current daily revenue of Base chain is second only to Arbitrum in L2.

Source: https://dune.com/niftytable/rollup-economics

In the short term, this cooperation is conducive to upgrading the Optimism mainnet, Base and other L2s to an initial super chain structure with shared bridging and sorting. In the future, more L2s will inevitably be incorporated into the "super chain" ecosystem; in the long run, the "super chain" can develop into a huge network that maximizes interoperability, shares decentralized protocols and standardizes its core primitives, which will facilitate the flow and development between chain abstractions and ecosystems.

Sustainable social universe led by Farcaster

Farcaster is a decentralized social network protocol designed to allow users to establish direct connections with each other, while developers can access public data without permission, support diverse and flexible client and application development, encourage innovation and experimentation, and provide users with rich social experiences and choices. Farcaster manages user identities on the chain based on Ethereum and OP, but stores messages and posts in the Hub network off-chain to increase speed and reduce costs. As an open social protocol, Farcaster allows a variety of applications to be built on it. Currently, Warpcast is the most popular client on Farcaster. Frames is a newly developed function similar to embedded applets, which allows developers to embed interactive experiences in Farcaster posts (casts). These interactive experiences can range from voting, casting NFTs to building games, and even integrating instant transaction checkout links directly in social media dynamics, meeting the needs of diverse social platforms.

As an important part of the Base ecosystem, many products have been derived from the Farcaster open protocol, such as the creator platform Paragraph, the content financialization client Jam, the community task platform Bountycaster, the developer tool Neynar, etc.

Source: @vahidsuperstar

In addition to top-down project construction, Farcaster also has a strong Meme culture and wealth-creating effect, which undoubtedly plays a great role in attracting users and enriching the ecosystem. Take the leading meme $Degen on Base as an example. It has already left the scope of primary Meme and plays an important role in the entire Base social-related ecosystem: $Degen was originally born from the top social protocol Farcaster, and airdropped rewards were given to active users of the /Degen channel. With the launch of the mini-program function by Farcaster and the opening of registration for the Warpcast client in February this year, there has been a surge in the number of users, and $Degen has also gained more attention. The first airdrop distributed 15% of the total amount. Currently, users can still obtain rewards by being LP on Uniswap, participating in the Meme competition on Farcaster, and accepting rewards. The team raised 490.5eth in the angel round, and individual investors were mainly Ethereum OG, led by 1confirmation. The team website revealed that Degen also built its own L3, using $Degen as the base token. The current market value of $degen is $1.24b.

A trend worth noting at present is that many emerging projects in the Base ecosystem use $Degen as a project functional token, relying on the huge flow of $Degen holders to achieve the cold start of the project. For example, perl_xyz rewards $Degen to users who play games on a daily basis. Users can withdraw/deposit $degen within the app or convert it to $Perl. The project also received an ecosystem reward of 10m Degen. drakulaapp, Web3 Tiktok, or the video version of FriendTech, received 20 million Degen incentives to reward creators on the application. The price of each creator is quoted in $Degen. Superfluid_HQ developed a framework called StreamYoink, which also uses Degen payments. BracketHQ is a sports lottery game where users can trade votes for sports teams in various sports leagues (NFL, NBA, NCAAB, etc.). http://Rounds.wtf, initiated by Nouns, also uses $Degen as a token.

With the development of Base and Farcaster, it is obvious that Degen will gradually grow from a Meme to an indispensable part of the social graph. A healthier Meme cultural atmosphere will also contribute to the long-term healthy development of the ecosystem.

Other social products: many innovative attempts

In addition to Farcaster, there are many innovations and attempts in social products on Base, such as the popular Friend.Tech, which has received nearly 30 million US dollars in fees in the past six months, and its current TVL is still nearly 40 million US dollars. Friend.tech is a decentralized social application based on the Base chain, which combines fan economy and on-chain gaming. Users enter a specific room to browse content by purchasing token "KEY". The increase in the number of users' purchases will push up the price of Key, and the fees collected during the buying and selling process are evenly distributed to the platform and the room owner.

Due to high handling fees, strong speculative atmosphere, and poor product experience, FriendTech's trading activity has dropped significantly over a period of time, which is also a problem worth reflecting on in social financialization.

Recently popular Sofi projects include Web3 Tiktok Drakula and live broadcast platform Unlonely. Drakula is a Web3 short video publishing platform where users can upload and publish their own videos or watch other people's videos. Platform points Drip can be obtained by making videos, sharing invitation links, completing platform tasks, or buying tokens from other creators. It can also be used to reward other creators. Similar to FriendTech, creators on the platform have their own tokens, which are denominated in Degen and the more popular the creator, the higher the unit price of the token. Users can view the most popular creators on the platform (the token price is higher and the rewards received are more).

Unlonely is a Web3 live broadcast platform where users can choose to create their own live broadcast channel or watch other people's live broadcasts. The platform's token is $VIBES, and users can buy Vibe for rewards. Users can view the calendar of upcoming events on Unlonely, search for anchors, watch live broadcast replays, etc.

Community Management and User Loyalty

Along with social projects, there are also community management and user loyalty projects, such as Blackbird, a loyalty and membership platform with $24 million in financing, which aims to create a deeper connection between restaurants and their most loyal customers. Blackbird allows customers to create NFT memberships for restaurants they frequently visit. These NFTs can unlock various rewards, such as earning $FLY tokens, SMS butler services, and "kitchen surprises" when dining. This approach provides new levels of engagement and value to diners. Blackbird is decentralizing restaurant loyalty programs. It allows users to earn points that are not limited to a single system; users can then flexibly trade $FLY tokens and NFTs accumulated by members on-chain. This system provides customers with a more flexible and valuable form of rewards, representing a shift from traditional loyalty programs.

QuestN and other projects provide some help for project advertising and promotion. Project parties can publish tasks and tests through QuestN to achieve better promotion, deepen users' understanding of the product, and provide a basis for user rewards. PartyDAO is a community crowdfunding platform. Users can initiate project proposals and crowdfunding on partydao, and discuss with interested builders in the discussion room to promote the development of the project.

· NFT and Art

As Jesse, head of Base, said, Onchain is the next online, and Base is committed to putting artworks and creative content on the chain. Zora is also an NFT creation and distribution platform, providing creators with many tools and building its own chain. Thanks to the active Base ecosystem, Zora's TVL has increased significantly. Creators can also choose to issue their own projects on NFT casting platforms such as manifold and rarible. The number of NFT transactions on Base has also increased significantly in the past two months, with an average daily transaction volume of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and an average daily transaction address of nearly 10,000.

Source: https://dune.com/k0rean/base-nft-market

· Casual Games

Unlike other public chains that pursue 3A/high TPS games, Base seems to be more interested in mobile casual games. For example, Frenpet is an electronic pet casual game. As a pet training game based on the Base chain, players can purchase props by purchasing Fren Pet's token FP, and earn points by feeding pets and fighting with other players' pets. The higher the points, the higher the ranking on the leaderboard, and the more ETH rewards you get. In terms of communication, Fren Pet generates social fission through the invitation system. The referrer can get 10% of all FP spent by the invitee in the app, thereby achieving new customer acquisition and activation with zero customer acquisition cost. Therefore, the game is also called "FriendTech version of blockchain game". A 4% handling fee will be charged when trading FP tokens, of which 2% is rewarded to players, 1% to the team, and 1% to LP. At present, the cumulative number of users has reached about 8k, and the market value of the token Fren Pet is 70 million US dollars.

Source: https://dune.com/whale_hunter/fren-pet

The Telegram sticker financialization platform sofamon is currently working on a personal chat sticker market on Telegram, where users can manage their own sticker collections, invite friends, access Sofamon's private group chats, etc. Similar to Friend.Tech, each sticker accessory has a price curve. The earlier the buyer, the lower the price. After subsequent buyers enter and push up the price, they can sell it out for profit. Shortly after going online, Sofamon's transaction volume has approached 7,000 ETH, and the protocol income is nearly 300 ETH.

Source: https://dune.com/garythung/sofamon

· On ramp and wallets

Most consumer applications or social projects also pay great attention to the threshold of user registration and use, and have improved and optimized the user experience to a certain extent. Privy, a wallet solution with $18 million in financing, aims to solve the contradiction between the poor user experience of multiple wallets and the privacy risk leakage of integrated login through the Web3 solution. Users can log in to Web3 applications through traditional accounts such as Google and appleid and automatically generate encrypted wallet addresses, which greatly reduces the user's usage threshold.

· Meme

Meme has become an indispensable part of social and consumer applications. The current status of Meme coins is extremely controversial because its culture is a mechanism that advocates (similar to) gambling. However, imitating online behavior is a very popular entertainment tool on the Internet. The Farcaster channel airdrop gave birth to multiple Memecoins with a market value of over 10 million US dollars, and the spread and development of these Memecoins fed back to the entire social ecosystem, making users more active. It can be concluded that Meme has become an important means of launching communities and projects.

As KINJAL SHAH, an analyst at Blockchain Capital, said, "Although it is still in its early stages and has not yet formed its final form, a toolkit for Web3 creators is gradually emerging. For example, mechanisms such as points and airdrops reward the use of the protocol. In terms of airdrop design, we still have a lot of room for improvement before maturity, such as restrictions on whitelists and release mechanisms, which have the potential to give birth to more specific reward mechanisms. Further drive its growth through existing communities, on-chain referral rewards, and "token social proof." Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit also expressed his love and optimism for memecoin: "I know very well that Memecoin will not disappear. I see the next generation seeing Memecoin as a very interesting social activity. Although Memecoin looks like a toy, it is a Trojan horse for cryptocurrency. They are the easiest way for the next generation to experience the latest DeFi applications and introduce them to Web3."

Conclusion

Social and consumer applications are undoubtedly the most promising direction for large-scale blockchain applications. From the current development, we believe that the Base ecosystem is in a leading position. The Cancun upgrade has significantly reduced L2 fees, almost eliminated Gas friction, and greatly reduced user interaction costs, which can better meet the needs of consumer applications for high-interaction and low-Gas infrastructure. Many applications have achieved high incomes relying solely on transaction fees. As an L2, Base has unique advantages and community tastes, which makes Base have the potential to attract a large number of new users and achieve large-scale adoption. More and more users are expected to join the Base ecosystem and achieve the goal of Mass Adoption.

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