BALD plummets a thousand times, what is the future of the Base public chain?

Written by: veDAO Research Institute

Recently, the L2 network Base launched by Coinbase based on the OP Stack has sparked heated discussions in the crypto community. The reason is that the Meme coin BALD issued on Base skyrocketed by a thousand times in one day, attracting tens of millions of dollars to the Base chain, and within just two days, its market capitalization broke through 100 million dollars, with the liquidity pool exceeding 25 million dollars.

However, while the crypto community was immersed in thoughts about "whether BALD will create a new round of wealth myths," the price of the BALD token began to plummet sharply. The reason was that Bald withdrew a total of 8,660 ETH and 179 million BALD in liquidity, causing the price of BALD to drop significantly, with a maximum decline of 80%, and the TVL once fell below 9 million dollars.

What could be the reasons behind BALD's sudden surge and rapid decline? What exactly is the Base chain, and what will its future direction be?

Controversy Surrounding BALD

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

The BALD project attracted significant attention and investment from users; however, the project experienced dramatic surges and crashes within two days.

The price fluctuations of the BALD token are closely related to large capital outflows. Since the Base mainnet has not yet been officially released to the public, the BALD tokens issued on the Base network can currently only flow in and not out.

But there is one exception: the deployer "BaldBaseBald," who still has the authority to trade tokens freely.

As a result, a strange situation occurred: as the price of BALD tokens soared, more and more retail investors entered the market, pushing the BALD token to its historical highest price. After that, BaldBaseBald withdrew over 10,500 ETH from the BALD liquidity pool, worth nearly 25 million dollars, almost crashing the bottom pool. This caused the token price to plummet by 85% within minutes, with the trading price dropping to 0.0000000018 dollars, with almost no trading volume or activity. This action triggered anger and disappointment among many crypto investors and supporters.

After experiencing the surge and crash, the BALD developers denied any wrongdoing, simply responding on Twitter that they were just adding and removing dual-sided liquidity and purchasing tokens.

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

Additionally, the sentence structure of Bald's official tweets is similar to that of SBF's tweets, with phrases like "Correct" and "quite well" appearing in Bald's few tweets, which are commonly used by SBF.

However, since SBF is currently under strict internet surveillance, such claims are merely one of many speculations. It is still difficult to conclude who the behind-the-scenes operator of Bald is. Whether BALD is a scam remains inconclusive; it may only be determined after the Base mainnet officially opens and ordinary users can extract tokens normally. However, it is undeniable that Bald's brief wealth myth has indeed refreshed the crypto community, and although it crashed overnight, it has become a traffic-generating tool for the Base ecosystem. As an L2 public chain strongly promoted by Coinbase and deeply tied to OP, it inherently carries traffic and funds, making its development potential worth paying attention to.

What is the Base Chain?

Base, incubated by Coinbase, is the second L2 network deployed on OP Stack, following the Optimism mainnet, and aims to become part of the Optimism superchain.

The launch of the Base chain is part of Coinbase's long-term planning. Its goal is to expand Ethereum through a powerful, interoperable Web3 ecosystem, allowing anyone, anywhere, to 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 on-chain home for Coinbase's existing products, users, and assets. Dapps on Base can seamlessly integrate with Coinbase, fiat gateways, and the Coinbase ecosystem.

OP Stack and the 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's standardized, shared, and open-source development stack, maintained by the Optimism Collective. It currently appears in the form of software behind the Optimism mainnet and will ultimately manifest as the Optimism superchain and its governance. OP Stack primarily focuses on creating a shared, high-quality, fully open-source system for creating new L2 networks. By coordinating shared standards, the Optimism Collective can avoid redundant construction in silos.

The Optimism superchain seeks to integrate originally isolated L2 networks into an interoperable and composable system. For example, Coinbase Base will collaborate with the Optimism Collective to design and build a protocol that can order multiple L2s and provide interoperability and composability among 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 ordering. The long-term goal is to develop into a vast network that maximizes interoperability, shares decentralized protocols, and standardizes its core primitives.

The Ecosystem of Base Chain

The reason why the Base chain can become popular, in addition to the influence of BALD, is also due to the reputation of Coinbase + Optimism. Although the Base chain currently only has a one-way cross-chain bridge (Ethereum → Base) without a front end, belonging to its very early stage, as a crypto giant with a market value of 20 billion dollars, Coinbase has unparalleled global influence in this field. Setting aside BALD, let's take a look at what other potential ecosystem projects exist on Base.

Pike Protocol

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

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

MES Protocol

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

MES Protocol is a highly scalable and high-performance order book DEX that supports multiple aggregated trades within a single order book. The protocol is powered 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 for liquidity between Rollups, integrated order books for token swaps, and seamless asset transfers across networks.

Volmex Finance

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

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

Backed Finance

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

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

Perennial

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

Perennial is a DeFi derivatives protocol for trading price information exposure, essentially a point-to-pool AMM that provides traders with leveraged exposure and earns fees for LPs. The protocol's mechanism design combines the advantages of DeFi and CeFi, making trading on Perennial both simple and scalable. It utilizes 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 existence of conventional projects on Base indicates that it is not merely a blockchain for Meme coins. There are still many promising projects on Base that could 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 compelling value proposition, it may become a major player in the Ethereum ecosystem.