Something odd is happening at Coinbase. For nearly two years, the company had been plodding along as the bloated corporate baron of the crypto world, delivering underwhelming results even as its executives gorged themselves on stock sales. But lately, there is a different aura around Coinbase. The firm seems lean and focused, and is displaying a coolness unseen since its startup days.
This was evidenced by its announcement last week of a new blockchain called Base. The blockchain is a so-called layer-2 chain that sits atop Ethereum and will process transactions more cheaply and efficiently, and is built using code from Optimism—a popular open-source project that is already one of the leading projects in the effort to scale Ethereum.
