Base Set to Activate B20 Standard, Opening the Door for Native Stablecoins, RWAs and More - Crypto Economy

TL;DR:

• The activation of the standard on the Base mainnet is scheduled for Wednesday at 18:00 UTC
• The protocol supports two configuration variants: one for general assets and a fixed one for stablecoins
• The implementation occurs after two consecutive outages were recorded in the network’s sequencer infrastructure.

The Coinbase-backed Ethereum Layer-2 network, Base, will activate the B20 standard on its mainnet. Base reported that, with this implementation, developers will be able to create native tokens directly on the network.

A new framework for digital assets and technical stability

Thanks to this activation, the development of stablecoins, real-world assets (RWA), and tokenized equities will be easier. Developers will be able to issue these fungible assets without the need to build and audit custom ERC-20 contracts.

According to the project’s technical specifications, the standard supports two operational variants. The asset variant features configurable decimals between six and 18. On the other hand, the stablecoin variant has a fixed format of six decimals and requires issuers to determine a fiat currency denomination, such as the US dollar or the euro.

The introduction of B20 was initially executed as part of the network’s Beryl upgrade, which was implemented this past June 26. This upgrade reduced withdrawal waiting periods from seven to five days and incorporated technical modifications focused on system performance.

According to Base reports, these tokens maintain compatibility with the traditional ERC-20 standard but integrate native issuance controls. The added features include supply limits, transfer rules, minting, burning, pausing options, and transaction notes.


Operational background in Base’s infrastructure

The arrival of this technology occurs after the network experienced consecutive failures linked to its sequencer infrastructure. On June 25, Base suffered a temporary outage caused by a consensus issue.

The organization noted at the time that an invalid block halted the production of new blocks on the network. Service resumed the same day after a pause of nearly two hours.

In the post-mortem analysis published by the team, it was detailed that a bug in the sequencer caused successive halts between June 25 and June 26. The first incident lasted for about 116 minutes, while the second outage lasted about 20 minutes.