Here’s what you need to know about Coinbase’s Base public mainnet launch and its “Onchain Summer” (w/ Jesse Pollak)

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn sits down with Jesse Pollak, lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase. You might remember him from an interview we did with him back in April. Coinbase, which is the second largest crypto exchange by trading volume, launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 (L2) blockchain, in February. The platform was in testnet, which is a test phase of the blockchain network, until mid-July when it launched its mainnet, the fully live version of a blockchain on the main network (hence the name: mainnet), to developers. Next week, Base is officially launching its mainnet to the public on August 9th, alongside its “Onchain Summer” initiative. We dive into what’s going on, why it matters, where Pollak sees Base going in the future and why he’s keeping an eye on the bigger layer-2 ecosystem.

Om Podcasten

There are constantly new tokens, DeFi projects, NFTs collections and DAOs being launched – but how can you make sense of everything going on in the crypto space? From the hype to the scams, TechCrunch senior crypto reporter Jacquelyn Melinek explores the impact of crypto on finance, art, web3, and society as a whole. Whether you’re a fan or a skeptic, every Thursday, Jacquelyn chats with a crypto expert, learning alongside you to break down the nuance behind the wild world of crypto. Chain Reaction is produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Kell Keller. Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper: https://techcrunch.com/newsletters