Written by: Zeneca Compiled by: Yangz, Techub News

Translator's note: With the help of AI coin issuance platform Clanker and With the popularity of Virtuals, the industry's attention to the Base ecosystem has skyrocketed. On November 26, local time, the transaction volume on Base skyrocketed, reaching approximately 11.36 million transactions, which was the first time in history that the single-day transaction volume exceeded 10 million transactions (more than half of the transactions were withdrawn. Jesse Pollak, Head of Base Protocol The response stated that the transaction was withdrawn due to the front-running robot trying to capture MEV crazily, and plans to further expand Base). In addition, pump.fun, the Memecoin leader of the Solana ecosystem, has recently been "bombed" by the community due to a live broadcast. For a while, there seemed to be signs of funds flowing to Ecosystems such as Base. Artemis data shows that Base’s on-chain capital inflows in the past month reached $815 million, ranking first among all chains. By comparison, Solana’s net capital inflow was only $304 million. So, is Base season coming?

If you've been following me on Twitter lately, you may have noticed that I've been posting more and more about Base. There are many reasons, but it would be too long to write a tweet, so here is the blog.

Actually, the explosion of the Base ecosystem is nothing new to me. I profiled Base when it first launched over a year ago, and if you don't know anything about Base then I recommend you read that article. In addition, I also introduced Farcaster earlier this year, so if you are not familiar with it, I recommend you read it.

In this article, I'll lay out why I'm still bullish on Base, what my concerns are, and how you can get involved. My goal is to provide an ecological overview and share some indicators that make me increasingly convinced that a “Base season” is coming (if it’s not already here).

Before we dive in, though, it’s important to note that much of what is covered in this blog post and much of what currently exists in cryptocurrencies ( Especially the stuff about Memecoins) are extremely risky and are a huge bubble, almost everythingAll will collapse. I, like everyone else, was trying to trade, and when I thought a top had been reached, I would sell my positions. So far, I'm making a profit.

Remember, don’t be a stubborn “diamond hand” community member, and don’t be encouraged by others to hold. You must do what is best for you. If you make enough money to change your life, sell it, withdraw the money, and actually improve your life. I've been through so much in this industry that I have to add this disclaimer before going into detail. The following is my opinion, which may be wrong, may be inappropriate, or may have many other reasons. DYOR!

Reason 1: Coinbase is awesome

Coinbase is the largest and most important cryptocurrency in the world One of the exchanges (and companies). If Coinbase listed a Memecoin, Memecoin traders everywhere would be delighted. This is because Coinbase provides easy access to trade coins for “regular people” or average cryptocurrency enthusiasts, so they know what a Coinbase listing means for price (usually – up!).

Coinbase's mission is to increase economic freedom in the world and bring 1 billion users into the on-chain world. There is no doubt that Coinbase would be happy for the industry if there were 1 billion blockchain users, but it is clear that they are specifically trying to get users to join their own Base chain.

In my opinion, most people still underestimate the size of the Coinbase marketing machine and how important a company they are. As the largest exchange in the United States, they have been engaged in legal and legal battles on behalf of the entire cryptocurrency industry.

The moment when the US SEC decided to sue Coinbase last year was something I have experienced in this industry One of those rare moments when nearly everyone is united behind the same cause, and nothing unifies strength like a common enemy.

Also, Coinbase is special, they seem like a real company with good people from top to bottom. This is not to say that other exchanges do not or cannot do this, but the atmosphere at Coinbase seems to be specialgood.

Overall, Coinbase is awesome.

Reason 2: ETH Season is coming

When it comes to Base, we have to mention it. People love to hate Ethereum. In my opinion, ETH Season is also coming.

I know it is popular to complain about Ethereum, but to be honest, I really think it is a few people on CT who are advocating this statement. Most really cool people don't spend all day on CT. In fact, every chain will be criticized, but I think Ethereum is criticized a bit too much. I don’t deny that Ethereum has “lost” to Solana in many ways, especially in the past 12-18 months. It's slow, expensive, and across all L2 (and L3), its ecology appears fragmented. However, Ethereum remains the second-highest blockchain by market capitalization, nearly 4 times that of the third-placed blockchain. Of the 328 blockchains tracked by DeFiLlama, Ethereum still accounts for more than 50% of TVL.

Ethereum’s price action has basically lagged behind all other currencies this year, but I Think that's about to change.

Here is a chart of ETH/BTC over the past 5 years or so. Obviously, ETH has not been doing well in the past few years! However, anyone who understands charts, markets, and investing will tell you that at times like this you should buy, not sell.

The time to swap ETH for BTC or SOL was 18-24 months ago. I'm not necessarily saying it's time to swap BTC or SOL for ETH, but, now is a better time than any time in the past few years, that's for sure.

"I am greedy when others are afraid, and fearful when others are greedy." Yes, I'm quoting this old Buffett rule of thumb again, but honestly, it's just so accurate and applicable. The best time to buy SOL was during the peak of fear after the FTX crash, and I admit I missed that opportunity (at least relatively speaking, I got in when SOL was around $40).

I have always been a staunch bull on ETH. This may not be understandable to short-term traders, but there is a reason why I have been stubbornly bullish on ETH. A lot of the reasons people don't like Ethereum have to do with usage friction, like gas costs and slow transfer speeds. However, L2 solves a lot of problems and catches up in areas where they are lacking.

Reason 3: Friction is disappearing fast

One ​​of the reasons Solana has been so successful recently is They focus on consumer applications and end-user experience. They have made it as frictionless as possible, and there is no denying that it will be much simpler for the average person to interact with Solana than with any other mainstream chain. Low fees and fast transaction speeds are one thing, but mobile-friendly wallets like Phantom and apps like Moonshot have also had a huge impact on new user acquisition.

Coupled with the popularity of Memecoin, especially pump.fun, and the resulting network effects, none of this is surprising.

But I think many of the above advantages are coming or coming soon for Base. First, Phantom has announced new support for Base.

I can't tell you the dozens of discord/tg chat rooms I've been in over the past few weeks I heard many conversations like this: "Ah, I only have SOL in my Phantom wallet, and I don't know how to use Base." In my opinion, this is just a turning point. In the future, we will see more protocols/applications begin to support Base, and more Base native applications will appear.

In addition, many people are suffering from Ethereum PTSD after experiencing the crazy gas period in 2021 and MetaMask’s poor UI/UX. They have not experienced interacting with wallets such as Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, etc. on Base, nor Base’s own native Coinbase wallet (which has a native yield of 4.7% on any USDC held).

Reason 4: Investing is investing in people

When it comes to traditional investment in companies or projects, I believe in "Investing is investing in people." What makes Base so great is the team behind it.

Brian Armstrong will meet with Trump from time to time to discuss cryptocurrency. He's definitely a great guy. If you're interested, you can read this article from 2020 and try to remember what the world was like back then, what most large tech companies did in terms of taking a stance, and the approach Brian took at Coinbase. How different.

In addition to Brian, Base head Jesse Pollak is also worthy of attention.

To quote and showcase Jesse Pollak as a person, I looked through his tweets and Collected dozens of them. I recommend you all check it out, but if you really don’t have time, here are a few of my favorite tweets:

Jesse’s 21 Days in the World A trip to meet the buliders and project leaders.

Try getting into Instagram and TikTok.

About understanding meme culture (it is recommended to watch the video).

These are just two of the many amazing people working to achieve Base's goals. I feel comfortable supporting this team.

Reason 5: Excellent indicators

In my opinion, predicting a chain The most important indicators of success are the number of builders/developers creating the app and whether there is incoming funding. Base-related indicators show that its ecological activities have increased significantly, and funds are also pouring in in large quantities.

From the pastLooking at the three-month situation, Base’s net inflows are almost the same as Solana’s. Judging from last week, other chains have been thrown away by Base.

In addition , the trading volume on Base has also been rising steadily, with a "skyrocketing" trend in recent days.

In the past few days, many AI agents in the Base ecosystem have tweeted attention has always been high.

Source: cookie.fun

Overall, it's clear that traffic and mindshare are shifting to Base. Whether this will continue or be a temporary blip, we still don’t know. Many say this is only temporary and that Solana will retain the most attention during this cycle. I don't agree with this statement, but I can never be self-righteous and think that I must be right and others must be wrong. Indicators look good, but indicators can also be temporary.

Reason 6: Airdrop speculation

Disclaimer in advance that this is purely speculation. The Base team has made it clear that it will not launch a token, but Optimism and many other chains have done the same before.

With the legal and regulatory environment changing significantly, I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility of a Base airdrop token. However, I don’t take it too seriously. I personally only regard it as the “icing on the cake.” I recommend everyone just use Base as normal and try it around as this is often the best way to get airdrops when the protocol launches.

The above are 6 reasons why I am optimistic about Base and think Base season is coming. Below, we’ll take a closer look at some projects worth watching.

Follow 1: Virtuals Protocol

Simply put, Virtuals Protocol is a launch platform for on-chain artificial intelligence agents. The protocol believes that "AI agents are not slaves, but productive assets; Al agents are not passive tools, but Income-generating assets that users can invest in and co-own, just like individuals can own equity in companies. These agents can function in different contexts as non-divisible characters (NPCs) in platforms like Alcompanions, Roblox, or TikTok. Virtual influencers on social media platforms will play a key role in reshaping the virtual economy. ”

In the past few months, AI has been slowly but steadily expanding its applications, starting to accelerate a few weeks ago and starting a parabolic upward trend in recent days.

Needless to say, everyone should know that AI is the main trend of current cryptocurrency, and it is likely to become mainstream in the rest of this cycle. Trends and areas. We have seen AI memecoins such as GOAT and ZEREBRO skyrocket on Solana, but the market cap of the top AI tokens and proxies on Virtuals is currently only a fraction of the Solana ecosystem. If you have looked at the capital flow and are looking forward to ETH Season and Base Season, then I think the Virtuals ecosystem is one of the most worthy of attention.

The two tokens that I am personally most optimistic about and hold the most are AIXBT and VADER, in addition to the native token VIRTUAL. While I own tokens from about 20 brokers on the platform, I think there are many other brokers whose tokens will do well.

You can find the newly issued Virtual AI agent tokens here (you can also issue your own tokens). In addition, I also recommend that you read the full white paper (which I am asking everyone to read again) to fully understand the protocol. Or, read a great thread about Virtuals from last month. This Thread provides a high-level overview in layman's terms.

Focus 2: Farcaster

Base and Farcaster complement each other to a large extent. Although Farcaster already supports many chains, but Base has always been at the forefront. As you can see from this chart, Base has had a 60-80% share of all on-chain transactions for Farcaster users for most of this year, and in recent days, this number has even reached over 95%.

Specifically for Farcaster, Clanker and Anoncast are the two proxies that get the most attention.

Clanker is an AI agent deployed on Farcaster that allows anyone to create a token by @ the agent and simply asking for it. Clanker injects its own funds into liquidity pools and generates fees for creators. People think of it as Base's pump.fun, but I don't think that's an appropriate comparison. To track new Clanker token issuances, check out this website .

Anoncast is particularly cool, allowing people to post on Farcaster and even Twitter with 100% anonymity using zero-knowledge proof technology (which I wrote about last year). You can post through this site, but you need to hold anon tokens.

As developers continue to try various new implementation methods, it is necessary to pay attention to and enter the "trench" of Farcaster.

Recommended to watch ThreadGuy’s interview with Dan Romero, one of the founders of Farcaster.

Attention 3: Old tokens, paganism and traditional memes, etc.

Although currently large Part of the attention has been focused on the above two places, and AI-related tokens have taken up most of the attention, but I think some of the older tokens on Farcaster are still worth paying attention to. They have been around longer and have some dead assets. Loyal community. There are many of these tokens, you can find some good older tokens by browsing the Base page on Dexscreener and sorting by market cap.

I think that if we really have a Base season, then at some pointAt this point, attention will shift back to cute animals and traditional memes rather than AI/Farcaster (or, perhaps in parallel with it).

Although the Virtuals ecosystem has experienced explosive growth recently, many such tokens have experienced varying degrees of decline during the same time period. Going back to the old saying, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." Perhaps something that currently attracts less attention may deserve more attention.

Focus 4: Other random possibilities

I originally planned to write a whole section here content, but stumbled across a great tweet covering 10 apps worth trying, 10 ways to earn on-chain income, 10 organizations worth joining, and 10 articles worth reading. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at this tweet.

There is an almost endless amount of other interesting stuff on Base, most of which I can't cover. The above is just what I’ve personally been focusing on over the past few weeks, but I encourage you all to explore on your own and find something you like.

How to interact with Base

I get a lot of questions from people and they don’t even Know how to start interacting with Base, so here's a crash course and some tips.

If you have funds on Ethereum in your wallet, you can use websites such as Relay or Bungee to cross-chain the funds to Base. These sites are very easy to use and cheap, and cross-linking usually only takes about a minute.

If the funds in your wallet are on Solana, you can also use Relay for cross-chain, or Phantom wallet now also has cross-chain options.

If you want to trade on Base, you can be a fool like me and not use a trading bot 90% of the time. However, you can also use bots, and there are already a few bots that support Base, and more should be coming soon. Two of the most popular bots are BullX and Photon.

In BaThe main DEXs for buying and selling tokens on se are Aerodrome and Uniswap. Personally, I prefer to use the token aggregator LlamaSwap because it finds me the cheapest route to get the best price.

Virtuals tokens work a little differently, as all AI agents can only be traded with the native VIRTUAL token. The easiest way to trade is through their website, but it is also possible to use LlamaSwap to exchange Virtuals tokens, as long as you select KyberSwap as your DEX.

If you are looking for a wallet for all Base/EVM tokens, I personally recommend using Rabby, but I heard Rainbow Wallet is also good. Of course, Coinbase also has its own wallet, but honestly, it’s not up to the level of the other two wallets in terms of functionality. (Or am I too stupid?)

Some thoughts on Solana, Base and the competition among various chains

I have always believed that it is very foolish to take competition between chains too seriously. Rivalries can be friendly, like the United States and Canada, or Australia and New Zealand. We can make fun of each other, joke about Solana’s outage, Ethereum’s high transaction costs, “Cardano is just Cardano”.

At the end of the day, if you are here to make money (which I guess 99% of people are), then you should keep an open mind, try it and go with the flow nature.

If you care less about making money and more about the future of finance and a decentralized and censorship-free future, then you should stick to your guns.

In this category you will find various degrees of extremists, such as BTC maxis who believe that anything other than Bitcoin is a scourge to the industry ; ETH maxis who thinks Solana is a disgrace to the industry and Solana maxis who thinks ETH/Base is trash in the industry. Even Bitcoin maxis are divided, with one group hating ETFs and MicroStrategy and another group bullish on them.

So, no matter which position you stand on, you will find a group of people who think you are extremely stupid. This is life, you can let it happen, or you can just follow the money, follow the builder, follow the attention like me , and most importantly, follow your curiosity

I suggest you do the same. The best alpha is not found by following my curiosity or my articles or other people's articles. The best alpha is found by following your own curiosity and going down the rabbit hole. I found it by thinking about it. It was like this in the past and it will be like this in the future.