Mysterious Tweets Unveiled: Coinbase's Secret Weapon

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's everyone's favorite part of the week.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 🎇News From Coinbase
• 🤼‍♂️New Players In Town
• 🧩️Answer To Yesterday's Puzzle
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S MYSTERY

Yesterday we talked about mysterious tweets by Coinbase and Optimism that got everyone's attention.

We tried speculating, thinking what could it have meant. Today we know for sure (obviously, duuh).

Okay. So. Coinbase just launched their own blockchain.

It's a basic blockchain, and therefore it has a proper name. It's called 'Base'. So, say 'hello' to Base, a L2 network.

Coinbase did not create their own independent blockchain (like Binance did with their Binance Smart Chain), because it would have had to be developed from scratch.

This would have resulted in isolating it from the rest of the crypto-economy.

Instead, they created L2 network running on top of Ethereum. The main coin here (to pay for transactions) is ETH.

Base is built using the OP Stack tool from the Optimism team.

OP Stack can be thought of as a set of Lego cubes that anyone can use to build their own L2 network running on top of Ethereum.

This explains why Optimism was also contributing to the mystery tweets series yesterday. It's a collab. With a promising, cool-sounding result.

Coinbase is the first Optimism partner to launch an OP Stack-based network. So yeah. That's quite an occasion. 

Both teams will now work on developing OP Stack to eventually create a "Superchain" that integrates L2 networks into a single ecosystem to scale Ethereum.

The ambitious goal of all this is to attract a billion users to Web3 (Coinbase already has 110 million).

As more users engage in on-chain activity, centralized exchanges (CEXes) cannot afford to overlook this trend and must attract new users to their platforms.

BNB chain by Binance appeared to be rather successful. So Coinbase is not missing out on such opportunities. 

OKX exchange has their own blockchain for some time already as well, and Bybit exchange is soon to launch the Mantle network. So yeah. Web3 arms race is on

But, news from Coinbase will be most beneficial to Ethereum and Optimism. Here's why:

• Ethereum ecosystem will expand thanks to Base's L2 network and new projects that will arrive thanks to it.
• Base will be a bridge between the vast Coinbase ecosystem and Ethereum.
• Base will donate a portion of the proceeds from transactions to the Optimism DAO Foundation and help develop the OP Stack.

So yeah. Cryptic tweets lead to grandiose ambitions and their reveal. Let's wait and see how things unfold.

TL;DR: Coinbase announced that they're launching their own L2 blockchain called 'Base'. Centralized Exchanges are stepping their game up, and trying to do all they can to onboard as many new customers as possible. 

AUDIUS ENTERED THE GAME

Yesterday we talked about Spotify. About how they're introducing new token-based features, and how they're ready to lead the way into the future.

Today Audius, the blockchain-based music streaming platform, is sending a signal. They're not planning on being left behind.

Audius has announced integration... with TikTok.

They'll be allowing users to sign up for a music service and link it to their TikTok account and vice versa.

This means that users can easily share their favorite songs from Audius in their TikTok videos, which is sure to make them even more viral and popular.

The music streaming platform has recently announced that it has surpassed 6 million monthly active users.

However, for now, only around 10% of them have used a crypto wallet such as Metamask.

The platform allows independent artists to upload and monetize their music directly, giving them more control and fair compensation for their work.

Audius co-founder Forrest Browning commented on the partnership, saying:

"TikTok has grown into a social-media juggernaut over the past few years, and we'd love to let the Audius ecosystem tap into that. Anything that's good for artists is good for the Audius community, and by letting artists import their verified status from TikTok, we think it'll attract an even wider group of talent".

Interestingly, Audius has also been gaining attention from high-profile musicians such as Katy Perry, Nas, and the Chainsmokers, who even contributed to the company's $5 million funding round in September 2021.

With such support from the music industry, it's clear that Audius is a serious contender in this race.

In addition to these two, there are many other streaming platforms out there, like Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music and many more.

It's a crowded market, and every player is trying to offer something unique to its users. Audius was built that way from the beginning, Spotify is the fastest from web2 to understand it,

Kudos to them, may the strongest survive and thrive.

TL;DR: Blockchain-based music streaming platform Audius has announced integration into TikTok. This will most definitely increase Audius' popularity, which means that Spotify's competition is getting bigger and bigger.

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S PUZZLE

As always, the right answer was the most chosen one. Our audience is brilliant 🥇🥇🥇

This was the question. We asked what's the hidden coin in this picture:

And the answer is... Polygon/Matic!

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• BitDegree Joins Web3 Domain Alliance to Make Web3 a Safer and More Welcoming Space. Yeah, we talk the talk, and we walk the walk.
• Despite Massive Crypto Layoffs, Circle is Looking to Expand its Workforce by 25%. Lovely, and optimistic. Just like my progress with going from 4 push-ups to 5.
• Sotheby's will Auction the Manuscript that First Mentioned the Term "Metaverse". No, it's not a tweet. It's the original manuscript of Neil Stephenson's 1992 novel "Snow Crash."