City guide · 🏙️ Capital region (L2)

Base City

The Ethereum L2 that the US exchange Coinbase built with the OP Stack.

At a glance

Base is an optimistic rollup that Coinbase built with Optimism’s technology (the OP Stack); it opened to everyone in August 2023. Being one step away from Coinbase users, it drew everyday apps — payments, social, games, meme tokens, AI agents.

Fees are paid in ETH. Base belongs to the “Superchain”, the group of OP Stack chains that share technology and standards, and is the largest chain in it. In this map it is a capital-region city where tokens first issued on Base stand.

📰 The story of this city: Base: Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 and the City Without Its Own Coin

Base is an Ethereum layer-2 network (an add-on chain that processes transactions off the main chain) launched by the US exchange Coinbase in 2023. It has no coin of its own, but the many tokens issued there make it a city anyway.

A city built by Coinbase, with no coin of its own

Coinbase announced Base in February 2023 and opened it to everyone that August. A layer-2 processes transactions more cheaply and quickly than Ethereum itself (layer 1) and then records the results on Ethereum. Base started on the ‘OP Stack’ software published by Optimism, with the aim of bringing Coinbase’s large customer base onchain.

Base has no coin of its own; fees are paid in ether (ETH). On the Crypto Nation map that is why Base City has no city-hall tower, which is normally a chain’s own coin. Instead the city is made of buildings, the tokens first issued on Base.

Cheap fees, one operator

Base transactions are ordered and bundled by a ‘sequencer’, which Coinbase runs today, and the data is posted to Ethereum so that Base inherits its security. Ethereum’s March 2024 upgrade added a cheaper way to store data (blobs), which cut layer-2 fees sharply and let small payments and experimental apps multiply.

In February 2026 Base announced a move to a unified software stack that it operates itself, reducing its reliance on Optimism’s OP Stack. The plan is a series of hard forks (rule changes) that gather the code in one repository and swap the current proof method, the check that transactions are valid, for a Base-specific one, so node operators must switch to a new client. Optimism also leaves Base’s security council, replaced by an independent signer.

Which coins gather, and what happened

Easy onboarding from Coinbase made Base home to tokens such as the Aerodrome exchange (AERO), the creator platform Zora (ZORA) and the meme coin Brett (BRETT). Experiments that attach tokens to AI agents, programs that act on their own, were also busy there. In 2025 Coinbase’s wallet app was reworked into the Base App, an attempt to combine wallet, social features and trading.

Base’s 2026 roadmap calls it infrastructure for a global onchain economy, with tokenized assets such as stocks and commodities, stablecoin payments, and tools for developers and AI agents at the center.

Things to know

Base leans heavily on Coinbase. Because one company runs the sequencer, outages, policy changes or regulatory trouble at Coinbase can affect the network, and the software overhaul brings upgrade risk of its own.

Anyone can launch a token easily, so there are many worthless meme coins and outright scams. Base’s team has said it is ‘exploring’ a token of its own, but for now Base is a chain without one. A crowded city says nothing about the quality of any single building.

Coins in this city

The coin list and market caps are as of the registry built on October 18, 2026. For live prices, weather and buildings, open the map. Crypto Nation is an unofficial fan project made by an individual. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the Ethereum Foundation, CoinGecko or the teams behind the coins and chains shown; coin names and tickers may be trademarks of their owners. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. Prices come from CoinGecko and may be delayed or wrong.