Coinbase (COIN), the large publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange, said its new Base blockchain, a “layer 2 network,” has gone live, heralding the start of a new era of public companies running their own distributed networks. Base was already live for testing by developers, and it became open to the public at noon ET on Wednesday. The move could ultimately allow Coinbase to garner fees from running its own blockchain, in addition to a potentially even more lucrative stream of revenue from applications built atop it, executives say. Layer 2 networks are built atop base ones, relieving congestion on the underlying network. Base is built upon the Ethereum blockchain.
