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.