Bringing Europe Onchain | Clemens | ETHWarsaw [4]

Hi, how's everyone doing today?

Very good, thank you.

Amazing. Well, I'm here to talk to you about a couple things um about Bass first and most foremost and then also about what we're trying to achieve with Bass and how that relates back to Europe, Eastern Europe, and Poland specifically. And our mission at BAS is to bring the world onchain uh and increase economic freedom and innovation. So where we at right now? Web two was all about as you know read write the ability to broadcast information on the internet uh and access that that information from wherever in the world you are.

And what web 3 now allows us to do is to add a third component to that which is ownership which allows value to travel at the speed of information across borders in seconds uh as opposed to days and weeks. So why does the world need to go on chain? Why does Europe need to go uh why does Europe need to go on chain? And why does the world need to go on chain? Um the reality is that in today's internet, in today's world, the way that valley moves is still quite outdated.

What you functionally have is a series of different spreadsheets and databases of different banks that facilitate most of the valley flows of our global economy which leads to situations such as you sending money abroad to Korea uh to Thailand or somewhere else and it actually taking two to three days to actually settle on the other side of the world. Now we do have fintexs out there that are able to mask that real slowness in the back in the back end um by providing upfront payments and so on and so forth. But fundamentally the tech stack and the infrastructure that we have today is simply not made for the needs of the modern human of the 21st century uh and still operates on a very outdated mode. So what do we have right now? We have slow and expensive crossber payments.

Um we have marketplaces and platforms that have achieved um monopolies and are able to extract monopoly profits. It doesn't matter if that is an Amazon, if that is an Apple with their app store and uh their tax of 30% which in my opinion is absolutely outrageous. Same thing goes for Android uh and so on and so forth. And then also the fact that all of our data sits in different silos and is locked via um API access. Uh and that is something that we've most prominently been able to witness and explore uh with Twitter and Elon Musk's uh takeover of Twitter and raising up the prices of the data that you can have there.

Um and I do think that in order to increase economic freedom and innovation, we do need different systems to allow a global citizenry to cooperate and coordinate amongst each other. So what is happening already today? I do think that now crypto has been around for more than 10 years. infrastructure has been built thanks to billions and billions of dollars of investment that have flown into infrastructure projects and really building the rails of this new internet uh of this new paradigm. Uh so we already have crossber payments that have been shifting more and more to onchain rails.

uh if we look at uh Stellar or Ripple with Moneygram uh and and Insta payments uh that have been facilitating loads and loads of remittances uh stable coin adoption is going to be one of the largest drivers of moving the world on chain. Uh so just in the last um in the last few years we've seen countless new stable coin projects come out. We have stable coins in nearly every single currency. uh and that really allows us to now reach people with financial products that just have a mobile phone. And if you look at the mobile phone adoption around the world, it has far surpassed uh desktop adoption and so on and so forth.

And one thing is quite clear if you go into a country like Africa, um people may not have, you know, a laptop, but they're all they all have a a smartphone internet access. Even if that's just a $50 smartphone from China, they're still connected to the world. And using these new rails, we're now able to effectively grant economic uh freedom and economic or financial products and services to that new group of unbanked citizens. So where are we right now when it comes to the onchain economy? When it comes to onchain global adoption, uh the total value lock that you see here from base is actually significantly higher than this uh chart was from five months ago.

Um we're now at over 12 billion total value locked on top of base. Globally, we have over 273 million monthly active crypto addresses. There's over $140 billion worth of stable coins on Ethereum alone. Uh, and in the US you have around 20% of the population that actually owns crypto. And from what I understand in Poland, that number is even higher, especially among young uh, citizens.

Uh, and I think that was a quite fascinating conversation I've had with a young builder here who was telling me that actually within the young demographic, you have more um, owners of crypto than of stocks, which I think is a really exciting development to witness take place. On top of that, what we now have is what we've been asking for all along. We finally have regulatory clarity. We have the Mika Act that came into force in Europe at the beginning of this year. We have an extremely pro- crypto presidency under Trump that um pushed through the Genius Act and and bills.

And what we now have is really the clarity that allows builders to know the rules of the game and really start engaging in this industry in a very big fashion. And that's why you've also seen all of the big banks, all of the big asset managers really taking very aggressive moves into the space because that regulatory clarity was what they've been waiting for. That regulatory clarity has opened up the floodgates for the JP Morgans, the Black Rocks, uh the Fidelity Fidelities of this world to move their business on chain, to move their assets on chain. And we truly believe that we're now at an inflection point where you're going to see a rapid rapid growth uh and adoption of the world going from online to onchain. So what I think is especially interesting for the European context and the four sort of pillars where we've seen a lot of adoption and signs of product market fit so far are obviously decentralized finance.

I think as the first and most important sort of innovation of crypto having a financial system and financial rails that operate 247 have deep global liquidity and operate across borders. Um we have commerce that now has been leaning into sort of the stable coin adoption allowing people to send and receive funds and value from no matter where in the world they are. Uh and then we do have social and I think social is one of the most interesting sort of aspects um really where it's all about returning users data to the users allowing users to own their data to control their data uh and to create um sort of a network um of social engagement um where creators own their shared content and are able to take their following from app to app. So I think for example, Farcastaster is one of the the pioneers in the space. Then you also have Noster on the Bitcoin network.

Um that really allows you to create your social graph, but then also to port that social graph with you no matter where you go. And I think this is especially relevant if you've gone through um you know all of the different social media um networks and platforms of the last 10 years. you know, you have Snapchat, you have Instagram, you have the Be Real coming up, Tik Tok, and every single time there's a new social network or some new innovation in the space. Uh, you always have to go through sort of the same um process. You need to first onboard to the app.

You need to find your friends. You need to rebuild your following from scratch. And we believe that onchain social, decentralized social will eliminate that because now you're able to build these new features, build these new experiences on top of existing social graphs, which now allows you to take your community from experience to experience without having to restart this process from a new. Lastly, gaming. Gaming has always been very big on digital assets.

They've had digital assets for the last 20 years uh and are one of the most popular products within the gaming world. And now onchain actually gives them the rails that they deserve. Uh so that people and gamers uh are a are able to do things with their digital assets that they weren't able to do before. They're able to take them from game to game. They're able to um you know buy, sell, and trade these assets uh in a in a permissionless way.

Um and I think this is one of the most exciting sort of areas of growth. Um and I believe this is also um the the key verticals that we would like Europe um to excel in. So a bit more about base. Uh currently we're standing at 193 million uh accounts. Uh we have um as of four months ago 16 billion assets on our platform and I'm sure that's again increased by quite a lot.

Uh we've have more than 4 million uh contracts deployed uh or 352 million contracts deployed by more than 4 million developers. Uh and we have 480 billion in DEX volumes that have been passing through the base infrastructure and stack. So what is base today? Where do we stand in 2025? Uh base again as a reminder is an Ethereum layer 2 um built upon the optimism framework part of the optimism superchain um that has been incubated by Coinbase uh close to two years ago now.

So it's only been two years and we've already come so far. So we have obviously base chain which is the layer 2 chain uh which allows you to use Ethereum but at way lower costs and way faster speeds than you would be able to do on mainet. So instead of paying $20 per transaction, you're actually looking at sub onecent transaction fees and sub one second uh timed finality which is a huge improvement in usability and user experience across the board. Uh we have base build is really where we say the core of our ecosystem are the builders. The core of our ecosystem are the people that take an idea, take it to the customer, take it to market and see a real opportunity for themselves to build something new, build a new exciting opportunity and hopefully make a lot of money along the way.

And these are exactly the types of people we want to back, we want to support. And we're working tirelessly day and night to make sure that base by default is the best place for that type of builder to come to. What's been most exciting uh and some of you may have seen this already has been the launch of the new base app um which came out in July is still currently in beta um but will be rolled out to all Coinbase wallet users within the next two to three months. Uh and that's really I guess the approach to go towards providing distribution to developers. It's a mobile app that's not just a wallet.

Every single onchain experience, no matter what you do, is always going to start with a wallet. And what we want to do now is to aggregate the entire demand, the aggregate the entire user base to make it easier for builders to get their product off the ground. Because anyone that's ever tried to build something in crypto that's not geared at a crypto audience that actually wants to leverage crypto to build for the everyday consumer has faced the same issues. You first need to sell blockchain to your user. Then you need to sell uh a specific network to your user.

Then a specific wallet. And then you already lost 99% of your target audience before you can actually describe your product. And so what we're trying to do now here is really create this user sync, this compounding growth engine where you can build and deploy many apps into uh and really get distribution of thousands of users from the first day. Um just because within the base app you're able to um connect to apps, you're automatically connected with your account, with your balance, with your social graph, and you're ready to spend. And I think this is not just an improvement of user experience for web 3, but also for web two.

Um, and this is something that we're especially excited about. We'll have a couple slides on what this exactly looks like uh further down the line. To get back to our vision and mission, what does Bass want to achieve? base wants to build a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. And the way that we go about doing this is by attracting 1 million builders or more than 1 million builders who in turn attract the users of our network, the 1 billion people on chain and bring the one trillion plus assets on our chain.

And we do that by providing the best possible tech stack available with the deepest liquidity um with the most performant um fees that make it as easy as possible for builders to really achieve their own personal business goals. So what does this flywheel look like that we really want to unlock? Why are we focusing so much on builders? We truly believe that by focusing on helping builders succeed and reach their own personal financial goals on our chain, we're able to bring on board more users, which in turn again makes this network even more attractive for new builders to come back on board and build for that increasing uh user base. So this is really the flywheel that we've been kicking off for the last two years and that is now rapidly accelerating uh especially for one reason alone or actually two reasons.

That's on the one hand uh the base app and mini apps and secondly the ease with which you're now able to create applications. I would argue that the barrier of entry for a web3 builder has been excessively high over the last few years. You've always even if you have the best possible idea for using decentralized tech to build something amazing. You still were reliant on being able to write in solidity to create a smart contract. You're reliant on finding that technical co-founder or being able to write that on your own.

And what we've really seen with AI um the last the last few years has been nothing short of breathtaking. Um and we do believe that these changes together have really led us to the point where I think we can now confidently say we've reached the point of early adopters and we're now moving to the early majority. And I believe this is the most exciting point in any technologies growth is because the biggest opportunities the biggest economic uh opportunities and the most violent growth phase always goes from early adopters going to early majority and this is exactly the message we want to give to builders. This is exactly the opportunity we want to make builders aware of um so that they can capitalize on this because this will be a very short time frame looking back but this will be the time frame in which most of the economic value will be created. So where do we stand with base currently?

I think we'll have some stats here that I I'll just leave standing up here. Um, I think a big reason why we've been able to get to this point is just because of the fantastic technical leadership, not just by Jesse, but by every single engineer that we've had on base and then by its open-source uh embracement and philosophy of really leaning into the best possible technology stacks available and trying to improve them best possible for builders coming onto base. Uh we've recently also um achieved stage one decentralization which has been a huge milestone in BAS's very short journey. We're only in year two. At Bass itself, we keep saying it's only day it's still day one.

And that's pretty much the entire focus of the company is to work as hard as we can to make Bass the best place for you as a builder to come to and succeed. So, the mini uh the base app that I was telling you about um looks like this. And if you come join the hackathon, we might uh be able to get you some invite codes for this app as well. Again, I think this is one of the most exciting things I've seen uh over the last 10 years. Uh you have embedded wallets, you have Face ID that allow you really to interact with these products without even knowing or needing to know that you're using crypto.

Because in most cases, if you're using an online application right now or using Amazon, nobody goes and sells you the internet before you just want to buy shampoo, you want to buy a dog toy and you go and purchase and that's all that you as a consumer care about. But for the last, you know, 10 years, all you've been listening to if you wanted to use a crypto product is why crypto is amazing, why blockchains are fantastic, and what blockchain network this is on, and why that is great. And I think this all now falls away. So what does the base app comprise of? You have on the one hand a social feed which is effectively a Farcaster client that we're running on.

We have um payments natively built in via our wallet. Obviously we have messaging which I believe will be one of the largest drivers of getting users into our app continuously and repeatedly leveraging the open source XMTP protocol. Um, and then more importantly, more excitingly for you as a builder are mini apps. Because mini apps are now the first time that I think we will see apps grow at the speed of memes. And the reason for that being again is if I show you a new web 2 app, I show you a new iOS app, I'll tell you about it.

You need to go to the iOS store. You need to download it. You need to set up an account. You need to top up funds. You need to find your friends and find your social following.

With a mini app, you build that mini app for the current existing base distribution. Uh, and with one click, any user is inside the app with their wallet connected with their social profile connected as well and their social following intact uh, and able to really start interacting with this product with the first click. Um, and I think this is really one of the most sort of or the biggest opportunities that I see right now is being able to build for this compounding uh growth and distribution machine because as of now we currently have uh 35,000 users in the beta. We have over 800,000 people on our wait list and Coinbase wallet has been downloaded by more than I think 10 or 20 million people worldwide. So, this version of the the base app will be rolled out as an update to every single Coinbase wallet user.

And I think that's especially exciting for you as a builder to at that point already have an app ready to go for when that floodgate opens and you have these scores of users coming in looking for fun things to do. So again, why I think we're now at this inflection point where where we will see this rapid explosion of innovation of uh experimentation um is in short AI. It has been absolutely amazing seeing builders really piece together a functioning mini app within four hours just using AI and having zero background in coding whatsoever. So I think that alone is going to also allow a completely new type of builder to enter the space. Um because the barriers have really dropped down where now the differentiator will not necessarily be technical prowess and how well you are able to code uh and program solidity.

Uh the key component in which will define success is how well do you understand your customer base? How well um do you understand the product and the user need that you're trying to serve. Um, and I think with AI, we will soon see um, many apps literally launch on on the daily or even in an hourly basis because once you've built them, it is very easy to reuse, repurpose, and push out the next app again. So, just a couple examples of what these mini apps look like in in its current state. Um, if any of you is active on Farcaster, you're very well versed with mini apps.

Meaning if you already have an app live on Farcaster, you can literally just copy and paste that into base uh and really build for this growing distribution base uh this growing distribution um that will be available to every single builder on base. Um one other thing that I forgot to mention which I think has been a huge huge announcement is that Coinbase has now announced that every single asset traded and created on base will be available to their 110 million uh Coinbase users. Uh meaning if you launch a a token on base, even if it is just a content coin on Zora and it does very well, anyone on Coinbase is able to find that and purchase it, which I think uh will create some very exciting and interesting outcomes uh in in the next few months and years. So everything that European builders need to get started today. Uh we got fantastic um documentation and I think this is really we've been hearing this uh from all types of builders is that base has one of the best um documentation hubs available.

Uh the mini kit is really going to help you get started with mini apps. Uh I really encourage uh all of you to show up at the hackathon, give a shot at building one of those mini apps and just see how ridiculously easy it is to actually build. And one of our mantras at base is build and get rewarded. We're not a chain that's going to go out and throw grant money at you um to come and build your product on our chain. It is our job to make sure that our chain is the best place for you to succeed as a real business.

And if you do uh get started building apps on base, we have many different ways to reward builders after the fact. So what we do is retroactive funding. Uh we do give uh builder rewards for those that are actually building mini apps and have proven that they don't need money thrown at them for them to come, but rather they come because they see uh the opportunity on our chain um from the get- go. So where do we stand right now in terms of base going global? In 2025, we already established on the ground presence in a range of different countries over the first half of the year.

the next half of the year where we were just we will be accelerating this pace uh to really ensure that we are able to reach builders wherever they are because the fascinating thing about not just the world but especially about Europe is is decentralization ironically um meaning you have fantastic builders in Warso you have them in the smallest towns of of Belgium uh and France and Italy and now our challenge is really to be able to reach that builder and help onboard them to base and so that we can help them succeed on base. So this is just a map of the country leads um that we currently have. Um we have Evan and myself present here in in Poland today. Um and then in Europe we're in total five different people covering the region. Um and we're just looking to really first reach builders, second help them succeed.

Uh if you've been in the space long enough, I think you recognize most of these products. Um these are billion-dollar success stories that have been built on base. And we are so excited to be able to help you guys be the next ones on here. Um because this growth flywheel that I was talking to you about uh at the start of this presentation is already in full motion and you're already starting to see these signs of early um exponential breakout. So when it comes to the stable coins uh transactions and processing, I think we're already at a stage where we have achieved um immense success um with over 75 million stable coin transactions processed per month.

Um unfortunately um Euro stable coins are lagging severely behind but I think that is especially the opportunity that now is present to those people that understand the European market and understand uh the European landscape. So I do not think that this will be maintained much longer. The eur the US stable coin obviously has been the first mover has been able to draw the most liquidity. Uh but Europe still is an economy of over 500 million consumers. uh 450 million in the uh Euro zone and I do think that this is one of the most exciting opportunities in bringing European businesses onchain using Euro stable coins.

One other u big announcement that sort of has uh been making the rounds in July is Shopify actually accepting base pay. Meaning now if you open a Shopify store, you're able to tap into the global cryptobase. uh and take payments in in stable coins. And I think this is really going to unlock some really exciting opportunities and really unlock some really exciting commerce which I think is what economies are built on at the end of the day. So I know we don't have much time left.

Uh I wanted to leave this here uh with you. If you are keen on getting started on bass, first of all we want to emphasize bass is for everyone. Everyone can be a builder. It doesn't matter if you're technical, nontechnical, if you're an artist or a creator, we want to be the place for you to come. Uh so if you would like to join the movement, please fill out the the builder network form so we can make sure that we um are able to support you best possible.

And for everyone that's looking to hack and build mini apps this weekend, please join our builder chat and we'll make sure that we can actually help you one-on-one hands-on over the course of this hackathon. Um yeah, thank you so much and stay based. There we have it. This was such an exciting talk. Do we have We have time for one question.

Does anyone have one question?

No. Then I'll ask a question. How Oh, there is a person. Sorry, I didn't see you.

Thanks so much. Great talk. Um just curious um seeing Tempo going soon live ARC and uh and Google's blockchain. I was just curious about your thoughts. is your decision working with a super chain.

Um like what are the implications for you? Like is it like of course it's good and in many ways but how would you compare this choice against what your competitors are doing?

How how are we or how do we see the launch of these different L1s?

Um what what you think um is an advantage in this sense that you're working with a super chain compared to all the others building their own chain and what might be a disadvantage. I frankly think it's exciting to see so many big companies actually taking crypto serious, right? We're sort of at that stage of, you know, first they first they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then they join you. We're really at that then they join you moment. So, you're seeing all these big companies moving into the space and you realize that the the main battleground right now is one of distribution and that one's going to be a frankly very violent fight.

You're going to have on the one hand companies with existing large distribution rushing in to sort of capitalize on that distribution while they can. Uh and the on the other hand you have you know the existing new startup networks that are trying to cannibalize that distribution from the existing players. Uh so how that plays out uh we're not sure. Um but we definitely think that it's a net positive for bringing the world on chain uh in general and and again um fulfilling our mission here.

Bam. There we have it. Let's have one more round of applause.