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Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that interviews crypto newsmakers to better understand the technology behind the hype and the people working to build a decentralized future.
For this week’s episode, jaquelyn interviewed Jesse Pollack, Base leader and head of protocols at Coinbase. Base is an Ethereum-focused Layer 2 blockchain launched by Coinbase in February. Pollak previously led all retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. In a past life, Pollak started Clef, a 2FA mobile app, and was an engineer at BuzzFeed.
The platform has been active on testnet, which is a testing phase of the blockchain network, since the end of February. He doesn’t share “official timelines,” but Pollak exclusively revealed to TechCrunch that Base is planning to launch its mainnet in 2023. Mainnet is the fully active version of a blockchain on the mainnet (hence the name: mainnet). major).
“It’s coming soon, we’re working hard on it,” Pollak said. “It’s our number one priority along with decentralization goals and the rest of the year is really about making sure we get there as quickly as possible.”
Base’s vision is to bring a million builders and a billion users to the chain through “easy-to-use” products on its platform, Pollak said.
Coinbase has been building on the crypto economy for over a decade, but Base hopes to get some of that value for itself and plans to help products and activities expand on-chain over the next decade. “I am thinking less about Base moving to Coinbase and more about how Base plus Coinbase over the next decade will work together to bring those millions of developers (and) billions of users onto the chain,” Pollak said.
Several crypto companies, platforms, exchanges, and infrastructure companies have committed to developing Base, including: Blockdaemon, Chainlink, Etherscan, Quicknode, Aave, Animoca Brands, Dune, Nansen, Magic Eden, Pyth, Rainbow Wallet, Ribbon Finance, The Graph, Wormhole and Gelato to name a few.
The short-term plan is to bring Base to the mainnet and decentralize it, Pollak said. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told Pollak: “We cannot not decentralize this. We have to live up to that courage and that spirit.”
Base expects to decentralize from Coinbase within “months or years” rather than a decade, Pollak said. The decentralization process “is not a forever timeline,” but rather a question of “how do we progress on this today,” Pollak added. “When I wake up every morning and say p zero, how do we decentralize?”
Of course, we talk a lot about Base on the podcast and where it’s headed in the future, as well as how regulation could affect the blockchain.
We also dive into:
- Developers growing internationally
- Benefits for the community building on Base
- Blockchain Inspiration
- Base performance to date
- Developer Tips
The article mentioned during the episode can be found here.
Chain Reaction comes out every other Thursday at 12:00 p.m.
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