What Coinbase considered auspicious ultimately turned into turmoil. A few hours ago, the crypto exchange announced the launch of the Base testnet. It is a layer 2 Ethereum blockchain network. Unfortunately, the new protocol does not deliver the expected results.
Base is experiencing significant operational issues
When launching Base, Coinbase wanted to optimize network fees. Above all, the crypto exchange wanted to provide developers with the ability to create dApps. Unfortunately, the euphoria around the testnet launch didn’t last long.
In just a few hours, many users and developers complained. And not only on the official Coinbase website! We also read a lot of complaints about Twitter. Canceled transaction, reverse transaction, unverified bridge contract… These are all operational issues reported on the new Coinbase protocol. Added to this is the slowdown in exchange traffic. But this is a long-standing problem within the crypto exchange.
Another event reported on a Twitter feed : Base changed the amount of funding allocated to public goods. The basic site displays the mention “Part of the income of the sequencer” (against 20% of the income). To justify this update, Coinbase stated that it is currently working with the Optimism Collective to determine the final amount of revenue going to public goods.
Coinbase responds quickly to complaints
Coinbase software engineer Roberto Bayardo provided some explanation on his thread Twitter. “Bridge contracts increase gas consumption on load, which wallets weren’t correctly estimating,” he said. Indeed, the Base operational problems would be due to a wallet problem. The latter does not properly estimate the amount of gas as well as the fees for carrying out crypto transactions.
The current situation raises an important question. Did Coinbase take the time to really study its project or could it be a desperate attempt to reboost its cash flow? The crypto exchange is currently in trouble. The report for the last quarter of 2022 shows a loss of $600 million.
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