Overview, Results and Discussion of Base OnChain Summer 2024 / @base
We discuss the overall picture, the resulting figures, and the business awesomeness that can be deciphered from those figures.
Good morning.
Mitsui from web3 researcher.
Today we will discuss the "On Chain Summer" that Base ran for 3 months from June~August.The news is that it was a great success, but we will take an in-depth look at what kind of campaign it was in the first place, how well it turned out, and why.
🔵What is On Chain Summer?
💻Buildathon Overview and Results
☕️Onbording&Grow
📊On Chain Summer Results and After
💬Base ecosystem's strength is its high LTV?
🔵What is on chain summer?
Let's start with an overview of Base's Onchain Summer, which is a series of events that are designed to help you get the most out of your summer.Onchain Summer is a campaign event in which Base, along with creators and builders around the world, aims to bring one billion people on-chain.
Last year we celebrated the launch of the Base mainnet for another 23 days with on-chain music, games, advocacy, and art by builders such as Coca-Cola, Blackbird, Zora, FWB, Parallel, and many others.
Last year's results were a huge success with a total of 75 collections published and over 700,000 minted from more than 268,000 unique wallets.
The 2024 edition of the "Hackathon" was held in 2024, with a major update, first extending the duration of the event to three months, with a theme for each month, starting with the month-long Buildathon.In 2023, a hackathon-like event was also held, but not on such a large scale.
Three months total, Base and its ecosystem partners were a fairly large event with over 600 ETH ($2 million) ready to be offered as prizes, grants, and gas credits.
💻Buildathon Overview and Results
A month-long global online hackathon with sponsors including Stripe, Shopify, Farcaster, Zora, Fleek, thirdweb, Nouns, Aerodrome, Synthetix, and more, and a total prize pool of 200 ETHThe total prize money was 200 ETH.
There are eight tracks, each with its own sponsor, each offering a total of 20 ETH in rewards, with 2-10 winning teams selected from each track.
The 8 tracks are as follows
Payments by Stripe:Easy-to-use consumerBuild a payment experience.
DISCOVERY with Fleek :On Chain Summer Registry to develop engaging apps to help people find out what they can do on-chain.
CREATOR with Zora :We create new and imaginative ways to activate on-chain creativity through projects that help people create, discover, curate and collect.
Social by Farcaster:Connect people with a social experience that leverages the potential of the on-chain.
Gaming by thirdweb:Fun and adoption to mainstreamBuild on-chain games with an emphasis on adoption.
ShopifyCommerce using:on-chainURL<> IRL integrations, such as affiliate and loyalty programs that run on the Commerce:Commerce with URL<> IRL integration creates a compelling commerce experience for sellers.
NounsUNPLUGGED using : Focus on community engagement and real-world impact, combined with IRL<>URLs.
AerodromeandSynthetixTrade with:Develop innovative trading and investment experiences such as the DeFi primitive with app interoperability.
And this "8 tracks x 20 ETH = 160 ETH" is 40 ETH short of the remaining 200 ETH prize pool.The remaining 40 ETH will be used to enhance the on-chain appsCoinbase Smart Wallet,Coinbase Verifications,Coinbase Paymaster,OnchainKitas a bonus pool of 40 ETH for builders using such tools.
The result was the largest on-chain hackathon in history, with over 1,250 projects submitted by more than 7,500 builders from around the world, and the Base team was so impressed with the turnout that they expanded the prize pool from the original 200 ETH to 250 ETH.
All of the prize-winning projects are listed in the Mirrorhere, but here is a selection from among them.
Payments
BasedCoffee isa native Farcaster app for crowdfunding and social initiatives.
SliceNew feature for faster, more seamless checkout
Base Token Store, making it easy to purchase any token with a pleasant UX experience.
Unplugged
Ether Goals, an on-chain accountability tool
Shredding Sassy x SHAKA Skatejam is, an on-chain action sport with interactive rewards.
step.fun isa fun and competitive way to earn USDC.
Commerce
An easy platform for anyone to create on-chain experiencespopshop
A social media campaign protocol that increases transparency and streamlines campaign managementReferWare.
FramePayoffers a simple Farcaster frame experience that allows users to cast a frame and redeem it for physical goods.
Creator
Interactive on-chain content platformfeed
Generative on-chain art that users can customize to their likinganglez.xyz
A platform that allows artists to share and cast their work directly on-chainOnchain-Experiments_V1
Gaming
BlueSocial isan easy game to meet new people
For unique on-chain generation gamesBrainWorms
For on-chain gaming experiences designed to drive mainstream adoptionGamerBoom
Discovery
CodeCred ison-chain evaluating contributions to open source
Using decentralized and AI technology to create practical on-chain quizzesDeQuiz3
GIVE onchain!Social Oracle for on-chain skills certification.
Social
Farview.idis a customizable page where users can share more about on-chain activities at Base and Farcaster.
Farcaster as a growing platform for brands and creatorsintelligent
Creative on-chain solutions for cluttered inboxesLunch Break.
Trading
Sophisticated Perpetual Contracts Made EasyDrake Exchange
Magnify Cashis a decentralized credit market that facilitates permissionless lending and borrowing.
Meme Coin Marketplace for Traders and CreatorsWAGMI
A platform designed to democratize the token pre-sale processSpeedball
There were many other winners, and cash prizes were also distributed for projects such as smart wallet integration and payment integration for additional rewards.
☕️Onbording&Grow
After the one-month hackathon is the two-month period of onboarding&grow.This period is simply a time when Base collaborates with a number of projects to implement a number of on-chain experiences anyway.
Some of the most distinctive examples are listed below.
Coffee Days
Here is the featured project for the Onbording period.This is an initiative to work with 12 local coffee shops around the world to on-chain payments.
This is an initiative to onboard more people to the on-chain by allowing on-chain payments at local coffee shops.To that end, anyone could mint a coffee NFT and sponsor a coffee at a participating store.
Customers of those stores could then receive a free cup of coffee by joining the on-chain via Coinbase Wallet.The first cup of coffee was free, and after that, those who paid with Base's USDC also received a $1 cup of coffee.
Ultimately, 69,327 people made 80,481 mints, helping that many people join the on-chain.

This initiative was a catalyst for onboarding more people on-chain and showing customers and businesses how crypto assets can simplify and enhance everyday transactions.
Paying for coffee on-chain is quick and easy and helps local businesses save on fees; sending USDC through Coinbase Wallet results in immediate settlement and no brokerage fees.
Doodles TV
Fans will have first access to Pharrell's music releases, limited edition collector's items, and the premiere of "Dullsville and the Doodleverse" featuring artists like Lil Wayne, Lil Yotti, Coy Lulay, Swae Lee, Kyle Rich and moreDoodlesᵗᵛ was launched in order to
Atari Breakout
Atari prepared a gaming platform called Onchain Arcade.Players competed for the top spot on the leaderboard and had a chance to win weekly prizes.Mint proceeds were distributed to the developers and artists of each game.In the end, over 40 ETH of mint proceeds were distributed.
Many other collaborations followed in rapid succession, including one with the fitness app Receipts, another with the NFT project Nouns and CryptoPunks, another with artists and creators, and another with Blackbird, the Dapps on Base.
To see what kind of campaigns there were,hereis a weekly update in the Paragraph, so pleasePlease take a look.
Also during the period, Base's name service "Basenames" is released and a more serious development camp "BaseCamp" is held.We also released the wrapped bitcoin "cbBTC" shortly after the end of the on-chain summer.
📊After the end of the on-chain summer and the results
Now that we have given you an overview, how well did we do?
Here are the results.
Builders, creators and projects generate over $5 million in revenue
More than 2 million unique wallets, 8 times more than last year, have joined the Base on-chain experience
Over 24 million on-chain assets issued.
If you also look at the on-chain analysis of Base itself, you can clearly see that the number of addresses, TVL, and revenue have increased since around June.However, the starting point of the increase is around March, which is when the gas price of L2 dropped significantly due to ETH's Dencun update, so the drop in gas prices and the massive campaign by On-Chain Summer are thought to have led to the breakthrough so far.
Looking at L2BEAT, TVL is currently in second place behind Arbitrum and has leaped ahead of Optimism in market share to about 18%.
After the Onchain Summer, we have started the "Onchain Registry" to keep this activity alive.This is an initiative to introduce meaningful projects from time to time together with the Onchain Content Network and various partners that have been erased.By filling out and submitting the form, projects have the possibility of being featured in the following networks
In addition, Paragrah, the on-chain summer I mentioned earlier, introduced several projects as Onchain Daily outside of the on-chain summer period, so it is likely that they will continue to introduce these projects on a regular basis.
In addition, Base is planning a Pectra upgrade as a further scaling update during 2024.This is a new DA layer update called PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) that will increase Base's gas target by 1Mgas/s per week by increasing total BLOB capacity without requiring every node to download every BLOB.The initiative will ensure scalability to withstand 1 billion people's on-chain experience by 2025.
💬Is the strength of the Base ecosystem a high LTV?
The last one is a consideration.
The results look great, but what is important is cost-effectiveness, so I will consider this from a business perspective as well.
Coinbase was not the only one to put out, but with a budget of "600 ETH ($2 million)", we acquired "over 2 million" unique wallets.
Assuming we get 2 million users with a simplified $2 million budget, the CPC is $1 CPC; we get one active wallet for only $1.
In addition, with a budget of $2 million, the builder, creator, and project revenue is over $5 million, which is more revenue than the budget, by golly.However, this is not a return to Coinbase, but to the partners who participated in the project, so it is not a return in general, but it is a very efficient use of funds in terms of economic effect because the ecosystem in which partners can earn is very important.
Now let's look at the pure Base revenue as well.We refer to Tokenterminal.
A look at the Earnings
June: $2.97m
July: $2.65m
August: $2.03m
andTokenterminalif the figures are accurate, the $2m budget is an amount Base makes in one monthSo the $2 million budget is an amount that Base would be able to recoup in a month's profit.
→For a detailed explanation of Tokenterminal's metricshere.
In conclusion, Base's on-chain summer was a monster project that earned $1 per active wallet, an amount that could be recovered in a budgetary sense (although the gross profit calculation excludes labor costs).Moreover, we also presented it as an ecosystem where Base could earn $5 million in revenue for its partners.
And furthermore, I personally believe that Base's strength is the size of its LTV.
LTV is lifetime customer value, which is the total value of how much one customer is willing to pay for your services.Generally, infrastructures such as chains attract users through large-scale campaigns such as air-drop campaigns or Base.
However, users attracted by such campaigns often leave as soon as the period is over.
For example, Starknet's DAUs plummeted from 298,400 on February 20, the day before airdrop, to 6,100 on August 26, a 98% drop.In contrast, DAUs for competing Layer 2 solutions such as Scroll and Linea increased over the same period by 49%to 53,000 and 173% to 213,000, respectivelyThe number of visitors to the city was up by 173% to 213,000.
Starknet's daily transactions have also plummeted, with the number of transactions falling 82% to 113,000 on August 26 from a record high of 1.2 million on February 20; TVL fell 65% to $588 million from a record $1.77 billion in March; and the project'sdown 51% since the airdrop.
As you can see, incentives from airdrops and other campaigns are often temporary.
Of course Base will drop a bit of quicksand after this, but I believe that the users acquired here are likely to persist.There are three reasons.
They are not fishing for financial incentives
Hackathons and other practical app development activities are encouraged
Coinbase-related products are making it more and more convenient
The first and most significant feature is the first: Base's On-Chain Summer is not fishing for speculative nature.Speculative means either "you get tokens" or "you get a good yield," but On-Chain Summer is not about that at all, it's just about having fun on the chain!This is an initiative to "enjoy the on-chain".Rather, this is a festival, and participants pay to participate in the NFT of each business.
Those who gather for speculation will be attracted away by another speculation, but it is very strong that they are not gathering for speculation in the first place.
Also, while hackathons and other on-chain summers themselves are transient campaigns, they provide a lot of funding for initiatives that will lead to the future.So it is simply more convenient for the Base ecosystem in the future.
In addition, cbBTC is working on a series of UX improvements, such as the Coinbase Smart Wallet, which simply makes the Base ecosystem more convenient.As mentioned above, the chain is simply becoming more powerful as a chain, as it will further improve scalability and lower gas costs.
So I believe that Base's strength is its high LTV.I think that once you join, it is hard to migrate to other chains because of the convenience.
Furthermore, as well as the fact that Base does not offer tokens, we have pretty much eliminated the element of speculative nature and remain committed to making the on-chain experience purely enjoyable, convenient, and usable.
This is the ideal way to fight, but you can't do it without a large user base to back it up, a revenue stream, trust and brand, and technical capabilities, so I think Base is taking the high road, side-by-side wrestling.
Since it is impossible to beat Base in a head-to-head match, it is likely that Base will continue to make great strides in the future unless it differentiates itself by building a unique culture like Blast, or by combining closely with an app with an overwhelming user base like TON, although it is not L2.
This is a summary of the Base on Chain Summer, results and discussion!
Disclaimer:I carefully examine and write the information that I research, but since it is personally operated and there are many parts with English sources, there may be some paraphrasing or incorrect information. Please understand. Also, there may be introductions of Dapps, NFTs, and tokens in the articles, but there is absolutely no solicitation purpose. Please purchase and use them at your own risk.
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mitsui
A web3 researcher. Operating the newsletter "web3 Research" delivered in five languages around the world.
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The author is a web3 researcher based in Japan. If you have a project that is interested in expanding to Japan, please contact the following:
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*Please note that this newsletter translates articles that are originally in Japanese. There may be translation mistakes such as mistranslations or paraphrasing, so please understand in advance.