- Coinbase’s Base is making moves to strengthen its global community with a new campaign.
- The program will showcase the potential of blockchain to solve real-world problems.
- It comes after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong hailed the network’s potential in conversation with traditional financial institutions.
When the Coinbase-incubated Ethereum Layer 2 Base launched in August 2023, it promised to bring a billion users on-chain. In the latest effort in line with this goal, the blockchain has unveiled a campaign that promises to strengthen its global reach, and bolster grassroots adoption.
Coinbase’s Base Unveils Regional Buidathons
Coinbase’s Base looks set to expand its reach with a new regionally-focused campaign. On Monday, September 23, Base unveiled “Base Around the World,” a series of regional “buildathons” to connect with builders worldwide.
Sponsored
The buildathon will take place in parallel in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America between September 27 and October 13, challenging teams to come up with on-chain solutions to local problems, or apply existing on-chain tools to solve local problems with up to 100 ETH in prizes up for grabs. Winners will also be showcased during Base events and on social media.
After the buildathon, Coinbase lead developer Jesse Pollak is also slated to hold in-person meetups with builders in Nairobi, Bangalore, Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila, with a virtual meetup planned for Buenos Aires. The dates for these meetups have yet to be released.
The series of regional events represents a significant step for Base to strengthen its global presence, as the 2023 Electric Capital Developer Report suggests that 72% of on-chain builders are outside the U.S. Base also highlighted the potential of the campaign to spark greater adoption by creating solutions people can benefit from in their everyday lives.
The recent global campaign comes after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong hailed the Ethereum Layer 2 chain’s potential at a Goldman Sachs conference.
Base Unlocking New Use Cases?
During a Goldman Sachs conference held on September 10, Armstrong promoted Base and other Layer 2 chains like it as offering the best payment global rails due to their low cost, speed, and international reach. At the same time, Armstrong argued that Base’s payment potential was unlocking new use cases, highlighting the possibility of micro-payments on social media, and hourly employee payments.
While Base’s goal to bring the next one billion users on-chain remains a long way off, the network’s efforts to onboard builders, from its on-chain summer events to the recent global campaign, combined with promotion from Coinbase, have yielded tremendous results. In a year, the network has grown to become the second-largest Ethereum Layer 2 chain by TVL, with about $6.7 billion.
On the Flipside
- The impact these regional buildathons will have remains to be seen.
- Base remains largely centralized and has yet to implement fraud proofs.
Why This Matters
Strong communities are often the fuel that keeps crypto projects running. Base’s global campaign promises to strengthen community engagement while creating avenues for grassroots crypto adoption.
Read this for more on Coinbase’s Base:
How Coinbase’s Base Is Unlocking Payments and a New Category of Applications
Vitalik maintains that it is too soon to celebrate the success of Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap:
Why Ethereum’s Rollup-Centric Roadmap Is Not “Done” According to Vitalik
