Buy Crypto- Markets
Futures- Spot
- Copy Trade
- Earn
- More
Base App is now fully open! How was your experience?
Original Article Title: "Base App Fully Open, How Is the Experience?"
Original Article Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
On December 18, the Base App launched by Coinbase officially announced the end of the Beta testing phase and opened up to users in over 140 countries and regions worldwide. This is a key step for Coinbase to build an on-chain ecosystem gateway and realize the mass adoption vision of Web3.
Evolved from the early purely utilitarian "Coinbase Wallet" to today's "Base App," this product is attempting to define a new form of on-chain "super app" — deeply integrating social, transactional, payment, and complex on-chain interactions.
Its core vision is as Base's head Jesse Pollak puts it: "Make on-chain interactions as simple as online."
The Versatile Landscape of Base App
Base App is no longer limited to traditional asset management but is a comprehensive platform integrating social, payment, and chat functionalities.
Base App has the following four core features:
· Closed-loop of social and creator economy: Integrated with Farcaster and Zora protocols. Each user-posted update can be transformed into a tradable digital asset through Zora, realizing true "earn-while-you-post." Additionally, the social feed directly incorporates curated transaction updates, making "on-chain discovery" intuitive and socially engaging.
· On-chain capabilities and payment experience: Supports cryptocurrency trading, explores built-in Mini apps (such as trading platforms, prediction markets, lending platforms, games, content tipping platforms), also supports free and instant USDC transfers via NFC, and allows earning yield through holding USDC.
· Interconnected Eco Mini Apps: Similar to WeChat Mini Programs, Base App has built-in mini-applications covering DeFi, prediction markets, games, and other fields. Smart wallet and quick payments: Users automatically receive a Base account (supporting multi-chain smart wallet identity) and Base Pay (a fast payment method based on USDC) upon registration.
· Privacy Communication and AI Collaboration: The chat function is based on XMTP encryption protocol to ensure privacy and security. Users can not only send and receive USDC directly in conversations or build communities of up to 250 people but also engage AI agents to assist in executing complex trades or portfolio management.
How's the Experience? What Kind of App Is This?
In practical use, the UI design of the Base App is extremely simple, and the interaction is relatively smooth.
Seamless Onboarding: Farewell to Mnemonic Anxiety
For newcomers, the most convenient thing is to not need a mnemonic phrase or back up 12 words. Key management is entirely entrusted to Passkeys, and users can create an on-chain account in seconds. This experience is almost the same as registering for a regular Web2 social account, significantly reducing the barrier to entry for non-crypto users.
Seamless Integration of Social and Financial
In the main Feed of the transaction section, under content posts where creators have enabled earnings, a real-time market button will be displayed, allowing users to switch to the trading page with one click.
The platform will also highlight large transactions or behavior where multiple people are buying in bulk, making it easier for users to follow. In addition, there is a convenient "hidden operation" — double-tap on a post of interest or a creator's coin to quickly buy in with a preset amount.
The discussion section focuses on pure content streams that have not enabled earnings.
According to the official description, the Feed algorithm will combine user interactions (likes, comments, follows), interest test results, as well as content timeliness, relevance, and diversity to provide personalized recommendations. Users can also interact directly in the Feed with links or Mini Apps shared by others.
Human-Centric On-Chain Identity
When you open the Base App, what you see is no longer a cold 0x... code but Basenames. The Base App is deeply integrated with the on-chain identity system, making transfers as simple as sending a red envelope to a WeChat friend. Names are no longer just symbols but serve as a "digital ID card" that spans the entire ecosystem.
Transaction: Gas Sponsorship
To achieve the ultimate experience, the Base App employs a "Gas Sponsorship" model in many scenarios, with the network fees covered by the official team. However, it is important to note that this convenience is not entirely free: when conducting token exchanges (Swap) or cross-chain operations within the app, you still need to pay a fee of about 1% (on Base).
Rich Mini Apps
The Base App Search section encompasses all integrated Mini Apps, covering applications in various fields such as transactions, gaming, creator platforms, DeFi platforms, prediction markets, music, and more. The Mini Apps homepage currently features the derivative protocol Avantis, Web3 soccer fantasy game Football.Fun, DeFi protocol Gauntlet, lending protocol Morpho, and Moonwell.
USDC Holding Yield Automatically Distributed Weekly
The Base App wallet page supports one-click activation of USDC yield, currently with an APY of approximately 3.35% (adjusted by Coinbase). Rewards accumulate daily and are distributed weekly (U.S. users need to link their Coinbase account).
What Are the Challenges?
As an emerging platform, the Base App still faces some obvious pain points or challenges in practical use:
· “Walled Garden” Effect of Social Features: For a product positioned as a “layer-one super app,” user adoption is its lifeblood. If the Base App’s user base is insufficient, it will directly lead to its core functionality entering a “negative loop.” If there are few active users, content updates in the information flow will be slow, and the retention rate will gradually decrease.
· Information Flow Quality Needs Improvement: The current social feed algorithm is still not transparent, and the content pool is filled with speculative and useless information, with high-quality deep interactions relatively scarce.
· “Liquidity Trap” of On-Chain Transactions: Its social trading section relies on displaying “multi-person concentrated purchases” to guide copy trading. If the user base is too small, this trend discovery loses statistical significance, and what users see may only be random actions by a few individuals.
· Security Defense Boundaries: Simplicity also brings risks. Phishing links disguised under beautiful social dynamics still exist. For newbie users accustomed to Web2 security protection, operational errors may lead to authorization leakage, posing a serious challenge in the on-chain world.
Of course, for the current stage of the Base App, its greatest challenge is not lack of functionality, but how to efficiently convert Coinbase's hundreds of millions of users and stabilize retention rates.
Summary
The full opening of Base App marks a shift in the focus of the Base ecosystem from "building infrastructure" to "competition for existing users" and "user adoption."
By consolidating wallet, transactions, social, creator economy, payments, mini-program ecosystem, rewards, and more into one, it has built a powerful on-chain traffic entrance. For developers, the Mini Apps framework provides a shortcut to directly reach Coinbase's massive user base.
Although there is still a long way to go in content governance and user attraction, Base App has undoubtedly provided a clear template: the future of Web3 should not be an isolated wallet but an on-chain society that is engaging, interactive, and rewarding.
You may also like
Soaring 50 times, with an FDV exceeding 10 billion USD, why RaveDAO?
1 billion DOTs were minted out of thin air, but the hacker only made 230,000 dollars
After the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, when will the war end?
Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions
The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.
There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.
Parse Noise's newly launched Beta version, how to "on-chain" this heat?
Is Lobster a Thing of the Past? Unpacking the Hermes Agent Tools that Supercharge Your Throughput to 100x
Declare War on AI? The Doomsday Narrative Behind Ultraman's Residence in Flames
Crypto VCs Are Dead? The Market Extinction Cycle Has Begun
Claude's Journey to Foolishness in Diagrams: The Cost of Thriftiness, or How API Bill Increased 100-Fold
Edge Land Regress: A Rehash Around Maritime Power, Energy, and the Dollar
Arthur Hayes Latest Interview: How Should Retail Investors Navigate the Iran Conflict?
Just now, Sam Altman was attacked again, this time by gunfire
Straits Blockade, Stablecoin Recap | Rewire News Morning Edition
From High Expectations to Controversial Turnaround, Genius Airdrop Triggers Community Backlash
The Xiaomi electric vehicle factory in Beijing's Daxing district has become the new Jerusalem for the American elite
Lean Harness, Fat Skill: The Real Source of 100x AI Productivity
Ultraman is not afraid of his mansion being attacked; he has a fortress.
US-Iran Negotiations Collapse, Bitcoin Faces Battle to Defend $70,000 Level
Soaring 50 times, with an FDV exceeding 10 billion USD, why RaveDAO?
1 billion DOTs were minted out of thin air, but the hacker only made 230,000 dollars
After the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, when will the war end?
Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions
The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.
There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.
App