On March 16, 2023 history has been written. Arbitrum, the latest Ethereum Layer 2 unleashing video that change the fate of their chain forever. The epic trailer revealing their airdrop announcement gained over ten of thousands of views just in few hours. Whoever using Arbitrum and working their bags there gain a massive wealth effect of ARB 0.00%↑ token airdrop. That day, L2 meta breath again after year of absence after Optimism enabled it.

Arbitrum TVL has grown massively since then. Instead of TVL goes down only after the biggest airdrop of its time, its growing higher with sustainable chain fees and revenue successfully place them as the elephant of Ethereum layer 2 just behind Base. 2 years later, the ecosystem is more alive than ever.

Two Horses Race

Even though there are so many L2s emerged post Arbitrum, no L2 chain ever come slightly close in term of wealth effect distribution:

1,092,811,500 ARB 0.00%↑ (roughly $1,95 Billion on TGE date) airdropped to
583,137 Recepients with minimum received of 625 ARB 0.00%↑

After arbitrum, theres nothing like it anymore. Every L2s become grift, post TGE no more beautiful metrics because almost everyone left to next shiny things. This table below just shown how bad L2’s launch post Arbitrum.

TVLs, chain fee, chain revenue all crushed to the abyss. Mantle with hundred of millions of TVL cant even sustain five figures daily fees. Linea holding up because of Metamask campaign. Everything else? Massacred.

Now there are only three relevant L2s: Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism. With the last one isnt even compete in the lane because its serve different purpose with other two, All left is two horses race. If we recalled back on how Arbitrum executed their airdrop, Base could be the next big one.

$34 Billion Thesis

Currently, Base took the biggest marketshare of Ethereum L2’s. They are leading on everything: active users, TVL, chain fees, chain revenues, everything. Even on two horse race, It will took Arbitrum very great effort to catch up.

This make JP Morgan analyst valuing upcoming BASE token way higher than current L2s valuation: $34 Billion dollar, A more than x10 from current ARB 0.00%↑ FDV. They also estimate that 20% of the token goes to the community. @eeelistar make a breakdown if that scenario happen with 1 Billion token circulated, That might become the biggest airdrop ever happened, even bigger than Hyperliquid.

Connecting The Dots

Now lets set the speculation aside and talk fact: Base is coming, and how positioned are you? do you take the hint on who they really intend to reward? What have you done to gain that exposure to make your chance grow?

The good news is, Base isnt like those team that not open to communicate on what they want. Theres plenty of good hint across the social media and what they did. All we need to do just connecting it.

Below is tweets coming from Base main affiliated account which giving a pretty clear hint on what to do:

Its look pretty obvious because what the tweets mean basically just do something on Base = be rewarded.

But if you look closely, there’s a pattern that seems very unlikely to be a coincidence: Order of the wording

BUILD and CREATE is always mentioned first. followed with TRADE and ONBOARD. This could be meant as priority order of criterion that possibly make us eligible for the airdrop. Its getting more obvious since Base is HEAVILY into creator and builders, its can be seen by their latest big campaign Onchain Summer 2024 where spotlight given to creator and innovative builder. Not only that, recently they just released Base app, which is a crypto superapp in Social media skin powered by Farcaster. So based on the evidence (no pun intended), The possible layer of positioning for BASE airdrop most likely tied on the formula below:

1. FIRST LAYER: BUILD - Participating Base hackathon, grant, and building an innovative dapp on BASE, but not only on their chain, but must be applicable on their base app aswell

2. SECOND LAYER: CREATE - Be a creator on Base supported projects for creator, there’s a plenty of them and we will talk about it later

3. THIRD LAYER: TRADE - Use Base chain for your onchain usage, connect it with your Coinbase account for easy onramp. This could be a hint to use a Base native defi protocols, especially those that add value to Base ecosystem

4. FOURTH LAYER: ONBOARD - This is very likely meant for onboarding peoples into Base app since there is a limited referral code there.

So to summarize, theres three things we can do for positioning ourself: Build, create, and have fun.

Sounds pretty simple right?

Get Based

Now the thing is theres pretty much hundreds of apps on this chain, which one we need to use and embrace to get based? I’ve mapped each layer with dapps that in my opinion could be easily utilized for positioning in the graph below:

Now this maybe not a preference for some as its a subjective view. I created this layer based on how they add values on the ecosystem and the practicality to implement.

The first three are obvious, Baseapp built on top of Farcaster and Zora as Jessepolak said:

Now on top of that, we can choose to:
1. Build a miniapp that actually useful

2. Use it as our X / instagram daily posts

3. Create our branding and grow as creator

Since Base app is crypto superapp, everything there need a bit of capital for interaction. althought not everything cost big amount, its important to keep some funds on your wallet. Theres plenty of miniapp on Baseapp, some are great, some just bloated useless miniapp. You can mess around to gain more exposure but stay vigilant as its involving real money.

My pick to ‘have fun’:
1. Create an experimental miniapp using Ohara

2. Giving tip and bought some posts, automated it using Noice miniapp

3. Do some defi transaction via Aerodrome (integrated) and Morpho miniapp

4. Play onchain fantasy football on Footballdotfun

5. Create and airdropping meme token for fun via Clanker and Bankrbot

6. Streaming on Retakedottv and writing pieces like this on Paragraph

6. Build onchain reputation credential via Talentprotocol

7. Actively using Virtuals protocol for ICP/AI agent launchpad (not yet in baseapp)

8. Trade perpetual on Avantis (not yet in baseapp)

9. Sharing Baseapp invite code for others

With this strategy, we could position ourself on four layers for potentially get rewarded just as like Jesse and David said: as builders, as creators, as degens, and as onboarders.

Stay Based!