Online and then Cold? BALD Plummets a Thousandfold, What's the Future of Base Public Chain?

08/07/2023·1years ago

Recently, the L2 network Base launched by Coinbase based on OP Stack has caused a stir in the crypto community. The reason is that the Meme coin BALD issued on Base skyrocketed a thousandfold in a day, attracting tens of millions of dollars to flow into the Base chain, and in just 2 days, its market value broke through 100 million dollars, with the liquidity pool size exceeding 25 million dollars.

However, as the crypto community was immersed in the thought of "Will BALD create a new wealth myth," the price of the BALD token began to plummet sharply. This was due to Bald withdrawing a total of 8660 ETH and 179 million BALD tokens from the liquidity, causing a sharp drop in the price of BALD, with the maximum drop reaching 80%, and the TVL also dropping to below 9 million dollars.

What could be the reason behind the sudden surge and rapid decline of BALD? What is the future of the Base chain? In this article, the veDAO Research Institute will provide an analysis of the Base chain and BALD.

Controversy Brought by BALD

BALD is a token project launched on the Base chain, inspired by the bald head of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, creating an image called BALD Jesus and a philosophy called BALDism. The project claims to be the first Meme coin on Base and pays homage to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong with the name "bald."

The BALD project has attracted a lot of attention and investment from users. However, the project staged a dramatic surge and plunge within two days.

The fluctuation in the price of the BALD token is closely related to the large outflow of funds. Since the Base mainnet has not been officially released to the public, the BALD tokens issued on the Base network can currently only flow in and not out.

However, there is one exception, which is the deployer of BALD, "BaldBaseBald," who still has the authority to freely trade the tokens.

As a result, a strange situation occurred: as the price of the BALD token soared, more and more retail investors entered, propelling the BALD token to reach its all-time high price. However, afterwards, BaldBaseBald withdrew over 10,500 ETH worth nearly 25 million dollars from the BALD liquidity pool, almost breaking the bottom of the pool. This caused the token price to plummet by 85% in a few minutes, with the token trading price dropping to 0.0000000018 dollars, with almost no trading volume or activity. This move has sparked anger and disappointment among many crypto investors and supporters.

After experiencing the surge and plunge, the BALD developers denied any wrongdoing and only responded on Twitter, stating that they had only added and removed double-sided liquidity and purchased tokens.

However, Bald's strange operations have led to a lot of speculation in the crypto community about its behind-the-scenes manipulator. According to research on on-chain data, the deployer address had received thousands of ETH from wallets related to FTX and Alameda Research.

There are also similarities between Bald's official tweets and SBF's tweets, such as "Correct" and "quite well," which appear in Bald's few tweets, and these are common words used by SBF.

However, currently, SBF is under strict internet surveillance, and such claims are just one of many speculations. At present, it is difficult to determine who is behind Bald's manipulations. Whether BALD is a scam or not cannot be concluded at the moment. Perhaps after the official opening of the Base mainnet, it will be possible to determine whether ordinary users can withdraw tokens normally. However, it is undeniable that Bald's brief wealth myth has indeed brought a breath of fresh air to the crypto community. Despite the overnight plunge, it has become a traffic tool for the Base ecosystem. As a Coinbase-backed L2 public chain deeply integrated with OP, it naturally brings traffic and funds, and its development potential is still worth paying attention to.

What is the Base Chain

Base, incubated by Coinbase, is the second L2 network deployed on OP Stack, and it is intended to be part of the Optimism superchain outside of the Optimism mainnet.

The launch of the Base chain is within Coinbase's long-term plan. Its goal is to expand Ethereum through a powerful, interoperable Web3 ecosystem, so that anyone, anywhere can build decentralized applications or on-chain Dapps based on Base in a secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly manner. At the same time, Base is also the home of Coinbase's existing products, users, and assets. Dapps on Base can seamlessly integrate with Coinbase, fiat gateways, and the Coinbase ecosystem.

OP Stack and Optimism Superchain

OP Stack is a standardized, shared, and open-source development stack that supports Optimism, currently maintained by the Optimism Collective. OP Stack is a set of software that supports Optimism, providing a standardized, shared, and open-source development stack to support Optimism. It appears in the form of software behind the Optimism mainnet and will eventually appear in the form of the Optimism superchain and its governance. OP Stack focuses on creating a shared, high-quality, fully open system for creating new L2 networks. By coordinating shared standards, the Optimism Collective can avoid redundant construction in isolation.

The Optimism superchain seeks to integrate isolated L2 networks into an interoperable and composable system. For example, Coinbase Base will work with the Optimism Collective to design and build a protocol that can rank multiple L2s and provide interoperability and composability between them through OP Stack. The short-term goal of the Optimism superchain is to upgrade the Optimism mainnet, Base, and other L2s to an initial superchain structure with shared bridges and rankings. The long-term goal is to develop into a large network that maximizes interoperability, shares decentralized protocols, and standardizes its core primitives.

The Base chain's ecosystem The reason why the Base chain can become popular is not only due to the influence of BALD but also the prominence of Coinbase + Optimism. Although the Base chain currently only has a one-way cross-chain bridge without a front end (Ethereum → Base), it is still in its very early stages. However, as a crypto giant with a market value of 20 billion dollars, Coinbase has unparalleled global influence in this field. Apart from BALD, let's take a look at other potential ecological projects on Base.

Pike Protocol

https://app.vedao.com/projects/c3a62c994ff82eb8c041c5736008d051ed4590d48c13b7473f75b25fbc8f8de7

Pike is a general liquidity protocol designed to unlock the utility of native assets by aggregating liquidity on blockchain networks.

MES Protocol

https://app.vedao.com/projects/20c9f5d567fdb56ef6863e99e5966b0ed482ffe35cbfd62cba7a3181b8836835

The MES Protocol is a highly scalable and high-performance order book DEX that supports multiple aggregated transactions in a single order book. The protocol is supported by zk Rollup and is currently running on order book-based exchanges on zkSync and StarkNet. The protocol aims to create a cross-Rollup interoperable exchange solution to achieve liquidity between Rollups, integrated order books for token exchange, and seamless asset transfers across networks.

Volmex Finance

https://app.vedao.com/projects/a49fe93ed4788b21ccfa5085c05a8c1653807ea00743f4bbe6894b23ebc973bc

Volmex is a perpetual DEX based on a decentralized matching engine and order book, maintained by a set of independent off-chain relayers or relayer nodes, and uses peer-to-peer communication to propagate and match orders between relayers.

Backed Finance

https://app.vedao.com/projects/2e245c75a10481958e4d6b99feed17a5cfb13fe5d7767f3b408c2f0dae64b4c2

Backed is an RWA (real-world assets) platform aimed at expanding the access to financial assets by incorporating stocks into decentralized finance. The platform currently manages 12 million dollars in assets, and users can purchase real-world assets on-chain and put their stablecoins to use. Backed's first product is called bCSPX, which is an ERC-20 tokenized tracker for the iShares Core S\u0026P UCITS ETF.

Perennial

https://app.vedao.com/projects/c190def49bbb1f2eda9896fd42ae5dd872cb0b924e3abe772d82ad32c42ee70f

Perennial is a DeFi derivative protocol for trading price information exposure, acting as an AMM for point-to-pool trading to provide leverage exposure for traders and earn fees for LPs. The protocol's mechanism design combines the advantages of DeFi and CeFi, making trading on Perennial simple and scalable. It uses DeFi-native trading models, such as no order book, zero price slippage, permissionless leverage, and composable positions.

Conclusion

Of course, Base is still in its early stages, and whether these projects can succeed remains to be seen. However, the presence of conventional projects on Base indicates that it is not just a blockchain for Meme coins. There are still many promising projects on Base that can make it a viable alternative to Ethereum. The success of Base will depend on whether it can attract users looking for a more affordable and efficient way to use Ethereum. If Base can provide a convincing value proposition, it may become a major player in the Ethereum ecosystem.

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