With social networking, payment, and AI all included, will Base APP become “Alipay on the chain”?

Author: Yuliya, PANews

The Web3 world has always lacked a true super portal, with users switching between different applications, fragmented experience, and dispersed traffic. However, a most powerful competitor has emerged, trying to end this situation.

In the early morning of July 17, Base held a highly anticipated "A New Day One" conference, announcing a major upgrade of its ecosystem. The core of this conference is not just the update of technical parameters - although the 10-fold improvement in chain performance and the new logo are eye-catching enough, the real focus is that Coinbase Wallet has been officially upgraded and renamed Base App. This marks that Base's strategic focus is shifting from a pure underlying infrastructure ("Superchain" Superchain) to a "Super App" that integrates users, applications, and social networking.

Strategic Evolution from Superchain to Super App

In the past, Base has always emphasized that it is part of Superchain's vision and is committed to becoming a reusable, scalable, and composable general-purpose Ethereum L2. However, as the L2 track becomes increasingly homogenized, pure performance is no longer the only winning formula. Who can effectively undertake and convert traffic and build a complete user path has become the key to differentiated competition. The Web3 world has always lacked a platform like WeChat or Telegram. Each application is independently guiding users, and the efficiency and experience are unsatisfactory.

To achieve this strategic transformation, Base officially upgraded its brand from a single chain to an open stack, which consists of three parts that work together:

• Base Chain: It is still the secure, fast, and low-cost Ethereum L2 that we are familiar with. With the launch of the Flashblocks module, its effective block time is shortened to 200 milliseconds, a 10-fold increase in speed, providing power for large-scale on-chain economy.
• Base Build: Provides builders with the tools and support they need to create the next generation of on-chain experiences, including a brand new dashboard to help teams build, grow, and monetize their mini-apps.
• Base App: Not only a wallet, it is built on an open protocol and is the entrance and front desk of the entire ecosystem.

It can be said that the launch of Base App is a key decision made by Base and Coinbase at the current stage of development. It is no longer satisfied with being just a place where applications can be deployed, but hopes to become the first interface that users see when they enter the Web3 world. By controlling both the underlying public chain and the top-level entrance in its own hands, Base is building a solid moat for future industry competition. The battle for the entrance to Web3 has thus been reopened.

Integrates social interaction, creation, transaction and payment

Base App is positioned as a "universal application" whose goal is to break the current fragmentation of Web3 application functions and seamlessly integrate core functions such as social networking, content creation, asset trading, instant messaging and daily payments into a unified platform.

A new open social network

The core of the application is an open social network. It is built on the decentralized social protocol Farcaster, which means that users truly own their own content and social graphs and can freely bring them to any other compatible application without being locked into a single platform. This social network has the following innovative features:

• Content is an asset, creation is income: With the support of the Zora protocol, every post of a user can be minted into an on-chain asset. Others can buy, collect or directly reward these contents, allowing creators to earn income directly from their creations from day one without relying on brand advertising or a large number of fans.
• Social trading: Users can see in real time in the information stream which tokens their friends are buying and trading, and can follow orders with one click, completing transactions without leaving the current interface, greatly reducing the threshold for discovering and participating in hot transactions.
• Participation is rewarded: During the event, top creators who post on the app and actively participate in community interactions will also receive weekly cash rewards, and all proceeds can be tracked and managed directly in the app.

Everything is integrated, one-stop experience

The Base App aims to be a one-stop hub for users’ on-chain activities:

• Massive Mini Apps: Hundreds of mini apps are embedded directly in the information flow, covering a variety of categories such as games, yield mining, prediction markets, etc. Users can easily experience and pin their favorite apps and discover hot trends.

  

• Seamless asset trading: The application integrates fast and smooth trading functions, supporting the purchase, sale and exchange of millions of on-chain tokens, while ensuring that users always have control over their private keys and assets.

  

• One-click transfer: Base now supports free transfer of USDC via NFC technology. The entire transfer process takes only a few seconds and the funds will arrive in the recipient's account immediately.

  

• Personalized space: Users’ social profiles are completely their own, and they can freely customize themes and appearances.

  

• Hold and Earn: Users can activate rewards up to 4.1% APY simply by holding USDC in the app.

Integration of financial activities and social scenarios

The chat function of the application is supported by the XMTP protocol, which implements end-to-end encryption and decentralization, ensuring the privacy and censorship resistance of communications. More importantly, it deeply integrates financial activities with social scenarios:

• Community and Sharing: Users can easily create group chats, manage conversations, and share their social content in chats.
• Interact with AI agents: This is a very forward-looking feature. Users can talk to AI agents (such as Bankr or Mamo) in natural language in the chat box and let them execute transactions, send funds, and even balance investment portfolios on their behalf. For example, a user can say "split the money from the last trip", and the AI agent can automatically identify the object, calculate the amount, and call the wallet to complete the payment. This shift from "click operation" to "natural language instructions" greatly reduces the cognitive threshold of on-chain interaction.
• Instant transfers in chat: In conversations with friends, you can send or receive USDC based on the Base chain instantly and for free.

Uncover the Power Behind Base App

Base App's smooth and seamless user experience is inseparable from major innovations in the underlying architecture and the construction of a developer-friendly ecosystem.

Flashblocks is launched, Base speed increased by 10 times

On the eve of the conference, Base officially launched the Flashblocks module developed in cooperation with Flashbots on the mainnet. This technological innovation avoids the traditional phenomenon of "high-priced transactions jumping the queue" through a time-ordered transaction mechanism, and segments and packages high-Gas transactions to ensure fair distribution of block resources. The most direct effect is that Base's effective block time has dropped from 2 seconds to 200 milliseconds, a 10-fold increase in speed, making it the fastest EVM-compatible chain currently, even 2 times faster than Solana. This speed has reached the "smooth" standard of 100-300 milliseconds of interactive feedback for Web2 applications, laying a solid foundation for complex interactions and instant feedback for on-chain applications. Node providers including Alchemy, QuickNode, and Infura have all supported developers to integrate Flashblocks.

Base Account SDK: Universal identity and convenient payment

To empower developers, the original Coinbase Wallet SDK has also been upgraded to the Base Account SDK. It provides developers with powerful tools needed to build outstanding applications:

• Base Account: This is the on-chain account and identity layer that drives the Base App experience. It is built on the Smart Wallet Platform and Basenames, providing users with a unified, self-hosted on-chain identity. When a user registers for the Base App, a Base Account is automatically created, which can be used across applications and chains.
• Sign in with Base: Developers can easily integrate the "Sign in with Base" function in their own applications through the new UI component, connecting to tens of thousands of active accounts with existing funds.
• Base Pay: A new payment module has been added to the SDK, providing a quick checkout service called Base Pay. It allows users to save their personal information (such as name, address, email address) once, and then make a one-click USDC payment at any merchant that supports the service.
• Sub Accounts: This feature is now live on the mainnet and allows applications to create independent sub-accounts for users, enabling seamless in-app transactions while allowing users to manage all of their application accounts from a unified interface.

From JPMorgan Chase to Shopify, Base builds a global on-chain economy

Base's ambition is far more than just building an application. Its ultimate goal is to build an open, efficient, borderless global on-chain economy. A series of recent major collaborations are showing that this vision is accelerating into reality.

JPMorgan Chase pilots deposit tokens on Base

Shortly before the launch, banking giant JPMorgan Chase announced that it would conduct a proof of concept for the US Dollar Deposit Token (JPMD) on Base through its blockchain business unit Kinexys. JPMD is backed by US dollar deposits 1:1 and aims to provide its institutional clients with a near-instant, extremely low-cost, and 24/7 on-chain payment channel. This milestone marks the acceleration of traditional financial institutions' embrace of on-chain technology and proves the potential of Base as an underlying platform for building trusted financial products.

Connecting business payments: In-depth cooperation with Shopify

The launch of Base Pay is closely linked to the cooperation with e-commerce giant Shopify. From the day of the launch, Shopify's millions of merchants can choose Base Pay as one of the payment methods for their stores and accept USDC payments from global users. For merchants, they can automatically settle the received USDC into local fiat currency without incurring foreign exchange fees. For American consumers, using USDC to pay will also enjoy a 1% cashback in the future. This cooperation directly brings on-chain payments into mainstream business scenarios.

Ecological cooperation is in full bloom

In addition to the two giants mentioned above, Base's ecosystem is also expanding rapidly:

• Marketing promotion: To celebrate the launch, Base has partnered with high-end health food store Erewhon to provide free co-branded juice to users with the Base App in designated stores, connecting online and offline.
• AI and Data: Coinbase has partnered with AI search engine startup Perplexity AI to provide real-time crypto data services.
• DeFi derivatives: Coinbase absorbed the core team of decentralized options protocol Opyn to bolster its on-chain derivatives suite.
• Open protocols: Deep integration with open protocols such as Farcaster, Zora, and XMTP is the cornerstone of Base App's openness.

Judging from everything revealed at the "A New Day One" conference, Base is playing a big game. It integrates social, identity, applications, and payments on an open underlying protocol, powered by Base Chain. As Chintan Turakhia, director of engineering at Coinbase Wallet, said: "When everything runs on a shared and open track, you will start with an infinite toolbox created by millions of builders." A more open, free and creative global economy is no longer a distant future, it is happening on Base. Currently, users can register to join the waiting list via email to get early experience of the Base App.