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Announcing the Base Ecosystem Fund: A Call for Builders

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Request for Builders
23
Mar

We recently launched Base, a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network. Our vision is ambitious: bringing the next billion users on-chain. One of our core values from the beginning has been “Base is for everyone,” and we’re thrilled to see builders worldwide starting to make Base their home.

Introducing the Base Ecosystem Fund

Alongside the announcement of Base, we introduced the Base Ecosystem Fund. This fund is a pool of capital designed to invest in early-stage projects (pre-seed to seed) building on Base. The fund also includes dedicated support from the Base team to help these projects succeed. Over the past three weeks, we’ve received a tremendous amount of interest in being part of the Base Ecosystem Fund, with a wide range of innovative ideas.

Request for Builders: Areas of Focus

Flatcoins

We are fascinated by the innovative thinking in decentralized stablecoin design, particularly in the development of “flatcoins.” Flatcoins are stablecoins that track the rate of inflation, providing users with stability in purchasing power while offering resilience against economic uncertainties inherent in the legacy financial system. We are also open to other forms of flatcoins that do not peg to fiat but occupy the space between fiat-pegged coins and volatile crypto assets. Given the recent challenges in the global banking system, these explorations are more critical than ever.

We are eager to hear from teams exploring their own stablecoin or flatcoin systems or those focusing on increasing adoption of existing systems such as Reflexer/RAI, Spot/Ampleforth, Frax/FPIS, Olympus DAO, etc.

On-chain Reputation

We believe that on-chain is the next online, and decentralized identity and reputation will play a crucial role in defining each individual’s on-chain persona. There is an opportunity to create more trust on-chain through reputation protocols that natively support on-chain entities. This could resemble a FICO score or Google page rank for ENS names, ratings/reviews for merchants, and other measures that help build trust on-chain.

We are excited to hear from teams deeply considering what reputation and credit look like in an on-chain native way and how we can leverage these systems while preserving user privacy and autonomy.

On-chain Limit Order Book (LOB) Exchange

Trust in centralized exchanges took a significant hit following the collapse of FTX. With the rise of Ethereum L2s like Base, we finally have the throughput needed for a more advanced exchange while eliminating counterparty risk through self-custody. While existing exchange offerings (e.g., AMMs) are incredibly useful and a critical DeFi primitive, we believe LOBs have a role, particularly for professional traders and institutions.

We are curious to see how builders approach designing decentralized LOB exchanges on or around Base. The high throughput of Base opens up significant new opportunities for designing new mechanisms for spot trading, limit orders, options, perpetuals, and more. Builders can use open-source tooling like OP Stack to build L3s, providing even more speed and control, potentially enabling deeper liquidity while still being accessible through L2.

Safer DeFi

As the DeFi ecosystem continues to grow, we need better tools that enable users and developers to keep up with the pace of innovation while keeping their funds safe. This includes tools that can protect against smart contract code vulnerabilities or protocol logic errors (e.g., self-service security testing tools, auditing services), tools to help mitigate the impact of ecosystem attacks (e.g., threat prevention, circuit breakers, and incident response systems), and on-chain insurance and cover protocols or any other offerings that can be a critical backstop for users in the event of smart contract failure.

We are excited to hear from builders developing systems, protocols, and tools that make it possible for every user to store all of their money on-chain. We believe this infrastructure is essential for bringing the next billion people into the cryptoeconomy.

Get in Touch

If you’d like to build one of these ideas on Base, simply select the requested idea you’ve chosen to build in the “Request for Builders” drop-down field on the Base Ecosystem Fund application. If you’ve already applied, please feel free to submit again with the dropdown chosen.

Recipients of funding will have a first look at new product features on Base, along with direct support from the Base core development and Ecosystem team members in the Base developer Discord. We look forward to hearing from you.

Note

Please do not feel obligated to work on one of these ideas to build on Base or apply for funding from the Base Ecosystem Fund. To borrow a line from our friends at YC:

“Responding to an RFS will never be the deciding factor in who we fund. As we’ve said many times, the people matter more than the idea. Plus you can’t do a good job on something unless you’re genuinely interested in it. So don’t apply with an idea described in an RFS if there’s some other idea you’d rather work on. You’re more likely to get funded to work on the idea you actually like.”

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