Web3 Grapevine

Coinbase, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, launched its own layer 2 blockchain in February 2023 - called Base.  Base is built using Optimism , a popular layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution. Using Optimism allows Coinbase to offer lower gas fees and faster transaction speeds than Ethereum.  At the time of writing, over $60 million ETH has been bridged to Base.  This might sound good, but it comes with a big warning sign. There have already been a handful of rug pulls on this platform.  The major one seems to be BALD token, which skyrocketed over 4M% within two days of launching. Alas, the token started to plummet as the BALD team address (0xccFa0530B9d52f970d1A2dAEa670ce58E4176389) removed most of the liquidity that was in LeetSwap - the exchange where you can purchase BALD tokens.  Overall, Base is a promising layer 2 solution that has the potential to make Ethereum more scalable, efficient and user-friendly. However, people ought to tread carefully as there seems

  As Twitter’s logo is set for a rebrand tomorrow, information about Elon Musk’s plan for Twitter is resurfacing - or should we say ‘X .’   This has a few implications, the main one being the adoption of Web3. We know Twitter has about half a billion users as of 2023. Elon Musk’s alleged plans to offer crypto trading services potentially lower the bar for Twitter users to enter Web3. It’s important to note that about half a billion people are currently in the Web3 space - it’s unclear how much overlap exists between Twitter users and crypto users at the time of writing. We’ve already seen the successful adoption of super apps by the likes of WeChat (as one example). A recent announcement from Hong Kong showed Visa and Mastercard are now available as forms of payment for international travelers using WeChat in China.  It’s not all fun and games for Super Apps, though. Singapore-based Grab had to let thousands of people go through a significant drop in share price.  So where does th