Morning Minute: Base Breaks Up With Optimism

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto majors rebounded 1-3%, with SOL leading the way; BTC at $67.4k
• CME will offer 24/7 trading in crypto futures and options from May 29
• The third White House meeting on stablecoin yields shows little progress
• A federal judge in Tennessee is blocking state-level enforcement against Kalshi
• The PUNCH meme soars 200% to $32 million as the monkey goes viral

🔵 Basis breaks with optimism

Coinbase’s foundation becomes independent.

Much to the chagrin of the Superchain.

📌What happened

Base, the largest chain in the OP Stack Superchain, announced On Wednesday, it’s ditching Optimism’s tech stack in favor of a completely internal codebase called base/base.

OP fell as much as 20% on the news.

Basis published one blog post titled “A new, unified stack for Base Chain,” announcing that it will consolidate its sequencer, proofs, and all core infrastructure into a single Base-managed repository.

Previously, Base relied on code from Optimism, Flashbots, and Paradigm, spread across multiple teams and repos. The new stack replaces Optimism’s bullish proofs with Base-specific TEE/ZK proofs (Base V1 hard fork, coming soon) and removes Optimism from the Base Security Council and replaces it with an independent signer.

Two more hard forks are planned, with Base V3 being timed around Ethereum’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade.

There will be no disruption to end users, but node operators will have to migrate base/base releases.

🗣️What they say

“The mission with which Base launched is the same mission we have today: to make it the best place to build and onboard the next billion people in the onchain economy. We knew this required creating a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly home that anyone, anywhere could rely on. To get there quickly, Base launched as an OP Stack chain.”

“To accelerate innovation, scale and security, Base is evolving its foundational software by moving to a unified, Base-managed stack.” – from the Base announcement

🧠Why it matters

Here’s the number that tells the whole story: Base has historically generated more than 90% of Superchain’s total revenue. That’s the revenue that flows to the Optimism Collective – not to Coinbase, not to Base.

Base has been the engine that powers someone else’s token for years.

Now that’s going to change.

Its base is $3.85 billion in TVL and the dominant L2 in terms of activity, and now it will have more control over its economic future.

This pretty much had to be done to maximize revenue, and certainly a prerequisite for all BASE token launch plans.

And interestingly, the rumor mill about the BASE token launch plans for 2026 is heating up.

So overall it’s a win for Base, a loss for Optimism and neutral for end users – unless it accelerates the launch of the BASE token…

🌎 Macrocrypto and markets

Corporate bonds and ETFs

Meme coin tracker

• Meme majors were light green; DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP +7%, PENGU +1%, SPX -2%, FARTCOIN -1%
• PUNCH Up 170% to $32M Leading Top Gainers; LOBSTAR (+60x), HODL (+12x) and Ailens (+35x) were other notable gainers

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

• The DBA Fund announced a $62 million raise for its second crypto fund
• USDAi announced the season 2 with points, and promises an airdrop for its rewards
• TradeXYZ officially launched Korean stocks for offender trading
• A federal judge in Tennessee blockaded states of enforcing state-level gambling laws against Kalshi (prediction markets), saying sports contracts qualify as swaps

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

• NFT Leaders were flat; Punks even at 29.8 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.3 ETH, BAYC -2% at 6.1 ETH; Hypurr is even at 500 HYPE
• Normies (+277%), World Computer Netizens (+67%) and Del Mundos (+33%) top movers