u/Cultural_Design_3177

Base App launched as Coinbase's everything app. Social features, messaging, payments, mini apps. It was a big vision.

But everything changed in the last three months.

In January 2026, Jesse Pollak openly admitted three major problems. The app was too focused on social. There were no high quality assets. User flow was insufficient.

In February 2026, the Farcaster powered social feed called Talk was completely removed. The Creator Rewards program shut down on February 15. 450 thousand dollars was distributed to 17 thousand creators and the program ended.

Brian Armstrong said it himself. The SocialFi features in Base App did not work as expected.

In March 2026, the technical migration was announced. After April 9 2026, Base App will no longer support Farcaster mini app specifications. All apps must migrate to the standard web app model. There is no custom SDK anymore. Everyone will use wagmi and viem.

Base Build officially stated that apps relying on Farcaster specifications will not work properly after April 9.

On March 31 2026, the new three pillar strategy was announced.

First is tokenized markets. Tokenized stocks, commodities, perpetual swaps, prediction markets. Base App is becoming a trading hub.

Second is stablecoin payments. Privacy features. Paying gas fees with stablecoins. Multi currency liquidity. Savings and lending.

Third is developer ecosystem. The Base Batches program continues. New tools. New incentives for user activity.

The old method required Farcaster manifest and Neynar webhooks. The new method works through Base.dev. You register your app, manage metadata, get a builder code, and use standard web3 libraries.

Some developers complained about the migration process. But official tools say the migration takes half a day.

On the user side, trading flows are now the priority. Asset discovery. Liquidity access. Clearer fee transparency.

Social features still exist but as a layer built on top of finance. Not the main interface.

Mini apps are still supported but discovery and tooling are being improved.

Base is now moving away from the OP Stack. They are moving toward more proprietary code for independence and scalability.

If this migration succeeds, Base could attract developers who avoided Farcaster exclusive development. If it fails, the ecosystem loses momentum.

Here are the questions I am curious about. Will daily active users exceed 700 thousand after April 9? Current TVL is around 10.7 billion dollars. Daily active users peaked at 621 thousand. Weekly active users are above 2 million.

How many mini apps will successfully migrate on time? What happens to apps that do not migrate?

Will the trading focused strategy actually bring more volume than the social feed? Or will users go elsewhere?

The AI agent vision is interesting but still early. No firm dates yet.

I think the pivot makes sense. SocialFi sounds good in theory but adoption was slow. Trading and finance are proven use cases in crypto. Base offers cheap gas and fast finality. These are real advantages.

The standard web app migration is also smart. Locking developers into Farcaster specific SDKs limited the ecosystem. Now any web developer can build for Base App using familiar tools.

But execution is everything. The next 30 days will show whether the migration is smooth or messy. I am cautiously optimistic.

My questions for you. Has anyone here migrated a mini app to the new standard web app model? How was the experience?

Do you think the trading first direction is the right move for Base App? What would you build on it?

Which L2 has the best developer experience right now? Base, Arbitrum, or Optimism?

I am waiting for your thoughts.

If you haven't tried Base App yet, you can download it here:

https://base.app/invite/omiaydinn/YY1RJYGV

When you look at the current state of Base in 2026, it is hard to ignore how fast the ecosystem has evolved from a simple Layer 2 experiment into one of the most active onchain environments in crypto.

Base has been consistently ranking among the top Ethereum Layer 2 networks in terms of real usage. Recent onchain activity estimates suggest the network processes 10 million plus transactions per day, placing it at or near the top of all rollups in terms of raw throughput. What makes this more meaningful is that a large portion of this activity is tied to actual user behavior rather than isolated or artificial volume.

Liquidity has also expanded significantly. Total Value Locked has remained in the multi billion dollar range, with estimates generally fluctuating between 4 billion and 10 billion plus depending on market conditions and methodology. While TVL alone does not define ecosystem health, the consistency of capital staying within Base protocols is an important signal of sustained engagement rather than short term rotation.

One of the most interesting aspects of Base is how distribution is changing the game. Unlike earlier Layer 2 ecosystems that relied heavily on crypto native users, Base benefits from direct integration with Coinbase, which creates a constant onboarding funnel of new users entering onchain for the first time. This has led to noticeably higher retention and broader usage patterns compared to many competing networks.

Another key shift is the evolution of application types. Early growth was driven largely by speculation, memecoins, and incentive based activity. However, over time, there has been a visible transition toward more structured usage. Decentralized exchanges, lending markets, stablecoin flows, and consumer focused onchain applications are now forming the core of daily activity.

At the same time, developer activity continues to expand. More builders are experimenting with social applications, mini apps, and consumer grade onchain experiences rather than purely financial primitives. This is gradually reshaping Base’s identity from a DeFi centric Layer 2 into a broader onchain consumer platform.

On the macro level, Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystems collectively now secure tens of billions of dollars in value, and competition between major rollups is intensifying. In that environment, Base maintaining a leading position despite being relatively young is a strong indicator of momentum and adoption speed.

There is also growing community discussion around the long term evolution of the ecosystem, especially as networks at this scale often reach a stage where incentive structures, governance, or token related mechanisms become part of the broader conversation. Nothing is confirmed, and there is no official roadmap around this, but historically, ecosystems that reach sustained usage, liquidity depth, and developer concentration tend to evolve structurally over time.

What stands out most is the combination of three things happening simultaneously:

strong transaction growth
expanding liquidity base
and continuous user onboarding through Coinbase distribution

Individually, each of these is important. Together, they create a compounding effect that is hard to ignore.

So when people say Base is cooking, it is no longer just a meme. It is a simple way of describing a network that is actively scaling across multiple dimensions at the same time.

The more interesting question now is not whether Base is growing, but how far this growth phase can extend before the ecosystem enters its next major structural evolution.