Welcome to the debut of Base Beat - your fun-sized update on the Base community. Here’s what you need to know this week:

The Latest News from Base

• The first Base testnet hardfork is coming up. The Regolith upgrade is taking place on April 27th at 10 am PT. It is a planned upgrade to enhance the network’s security and reliability. 📡  Node operators will need to upgrade to Base node V0.1.1. We don’t expect any downtime or impact on the user experience. You can track the status of the upgrade on the Base status page.

• Base Builder Quest is on! Deploy a smart contract on Base & mint a commemorative NFT by artist Andre Oshea. Learn more here, or simply get started with the Quest. Follow Andre on Twitter at @andreoshea or on Instagram at @andreoshea_

• Open Zeppelin's Defender supports Base testnet. Benefits for builders:

  • Secure & automate smart contract admin

  • Craft automated scripts

  • Monitor & tackle exploits

  • Embrace security best practices

  • More on the Open Zeppelin blog

Curious Corner: Discord Q&A Gems

A recap of topics our Discord community was most curious about. Join us for our weekly Friday Q&As in the Base Discord #base-stage channel.

• What are our plans for decentralization? We’re collaborating with Optimism to progressively decentralize Base. Our goal: Base becomes a Stage 2 rollup, per Vitalik's vision. Learn more in our blog.

• How are we ensuring security on Base? Base combines Coinbase's security expertise with an open-source foundation. We believe some of the most secure platforms are open source, with input from various teams — one great example of this is both Optimism and Base running independent security audits to strengthen and secure the same OP Stack codebase.

• What is Base’s role in the overall L2 ecosystem? We believe that Ethereum will scale with multiple chains, Base being one of them. Learn more about the vision for the Superchain in our blog.

• Why did we choose to build Base on Optimism? We embrace the open-source, modular, MIT-licensed OP Stack for upgradability. We have also collaborated with the Optimism team around EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding), and share a common vision for scaling Ethereum. Learn more in our blog.

• Is funding available for developers? Building on Base? Submit your project for consideration to the Base Ecosystem Fund. Need inspiration? See our Request for Builders.

• How are we going to reduce fees on Base? Continuing to drive down fees on Base is a top priority — we’re working  on EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding) to reduce Ethereum & Base fees.

• Are any analytics solutions available? Flipside & Artemis analytics available on Base testnet; many more to come on mainnet.

• What role does community feedback play in developing Base? Community input helps us make Base better. Share thoughts on Discord.

• What are our plans for the gaming and NFT verticals? Excited about the potential of NFTs and gaming to accelerate mass adoption. Our vision is to make Base an easy-to-use platform for creators & game builders.

Base All-Stars: Spotlighting Projects & Builders

Recently at our Discord Friday Q&A, we hosted Quick Intel and Permissive.

• Quick Intel: Token scanner for user safety across chains.

• Permissive: Authorization framework with Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) for user-controlled permissions & actions.

And last Friday, we hosted Thirdweb to talk about their Base-d game on testnet Cat Attack, which had 100k+ players and 1M+ transactions only 48 hours after launch.

Are you a dev interested in building an onchain game, but need a simple way to get started? Check out Thirdweb’s suite of tooling.

What’s Next?

Connect with Base on Twitter and Discord.

Got a question about Base you’d like to have answered? Drop it in the #base-friday-questions channel in the Base Discord.