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Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun upgrade finally went live this week, and many L2s immediately saw their transaction fees fall dramatically, as was the intention. Among them was the Coinbase-incubated Base, which was created by Jesse Pollak. Pollak joined Unchained to discuss the impact Dencun was having on Base; how he thinks Layer 1s and Layer 2s will start to differ from one another and eventually spawn a multitude of specialized Layer 3s; his response to criticisms of the increasing use of Layer 2s, what he’s focusing on now, and why he supports using the word “onchain” over “crypto” or “web3.”

Show highlights:

  • The problem that Dencun is trying to solve
  • The benefits of blobs and blobspace
  • How Dencun has already reduced Base’s fees, but also increased its transactions
  • How Jesse thinks Layer 1s and Layer 2s will start to become differentiated from each other
  • The rise of Layer 3s
  • How Jesse addresses criticisms of fragmentation and centralization arising from the increasing use of Layer 2s
  • Why Jesse is particularly excited about two features of the Dencun upgrade—transient storage and increased composability between L1s and L2s
  • What Jesse and the Base team are focusing on now
  • Why Jesse thinks that “onchain” is a better word to describe the industry than “crypto”  or “blockchain” or “web3”

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Episode Transcript

Guest

Previous appearances:

Links

Recent coverage on Unchained of the Dencun Upgrade and Base: 

CoinDesk:

 

Jesse’s tweets on Dencun

 

Blobs / Proto-danksharding

 

Superchain