Ethereum-based (ETH) scaling solution Optimism (OP) is skyrocketing after the announcement of a partnership with a scaling project incubated by the largest crypto exchange platform by volume in the US.
In a recent announcement, developer Jesse Pollack says that the testnet of Base, a new layer-2 scaling solution developed in conjunction with Coinbase, has launched with the goal of introducing a billion new customers to crypto.
“Our goal with Base is to… onboard one billion users into the crypto economy. In pursuit of this goal, Base will serve as both a home for Coinbase’s on-chain products and an open ecosystem where anyone can build.”
According to Pollack, Base will be built on top of OP, another ETH layer-2 scaling solution that offers rollups. News of the testnet launch sent OP surging. The token went from a seven-day low of $2.36 up to $3.01, a 20% increase. It has since retraced and is trading for $2.91.
Base will not have its own native token and says that ETH tokens will be used to operate the layer-2 scaling solution.
Base says it chose to work with Optimism because they both recognized what needed to be done to make ETH affordable for mainstream customers.
“We began working with OP Labs, the first core dev of the OP Stack, on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844. Through that work, we developed a shared vision for scaling Ethereum.
When EIP4844 was introduced in 2022, Coinbase and OP Labs both recognized it as the missing piece required for Ethereum to enable L2s that would achieve the 10-100x cost savings, and make the crypto economy more affordable for mainstream users.”
Base will also feature development kit for building decentralized applications as well as a bridge that allows users to jump to other competing blockchains, such as Solana (SOL) and Bitcoin (BTC).
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