VIP-4: VAB Moving to Base Network

This proposal outlines the proposition of migrating Vabble and VAB token to the Base Network blockchain for the purpose of building in a more supportive ecosystem while rejuvenating the perception and creating a better experience of Vabble and the token VAB. The following outlines the case for Base vs Polygon along with the migration process, pro’s and con’s.

An Overview of Base Network

Base Network is an L2 (Solidity) blockchain built on Optimism's OP stack and launched in August 2023. Base has been built and incubated by the Coinbase internal team and they share Optimism's vision of modular, optimistic rollup agnostic {superchains}(https://docs.optimism.io/stack/protocol/fault-proofs/overview) , a network of chains that share functions such as bridging, governance, and communication layers. Upon launch, they have pursued the decentralization of the network by completing updates to the infrastructure to implement {fault proofs}(https://docs.optimism.io/stack/protocol/fault-proofs/overview) as they become available by OP Labs.

Since Base Network inception, the chain has experienced significant growth and speculative user acquisition with the total user addresses on the chain exceeding 80M and over 63M in contracts have been deployed. The current TVL of BASE is $220M.

To view all chain statistics, visit: https://base.blockscout.com/stats

The network boasts a low transaction fee with the average fee being $0.003c and block time of under 2s (seconds).

Looking at the Base Network tokens, both native and migrations, 240+ tokens have launched or migrated to Base since August 2023, opening Vabbles opportunity to be noticed on a less saturated chain when compared to Ethereums 3600, and Polygons 800 tokens.

Furthermore, Base, Coinbase, and Coinbase ventures, as well as Optimism offer a high number of grant programs and investments to projects who are building on, and who are looking to call Base Network, their home.

Fund and Grant Links: 1: https://base.mirror.xyz/yxd0L-FlWCto53pDaxIkEBdkgavvXJk4S3O_5-I33No 2: https://paragraph.xyz/@grants.base.eth/calling-based-builders 3: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiSAod4PAbXlvvDGtHWu-GqzGpvHYfaTQR2f77AawD7GYc4Q/viewform

One important factor to consider in your decision is that Base is not fully decentralized but they aim to be. Their Sequencers, along with Optimism and Arbitrums, are only operated by the internal core development team, as with BASE, Coinbase and Base.org. In the event of a lawsuit against Coinbase with the SEC should result in Coinbase and Base.org having to turn off their sequencer, it would mean that the BASE network would no longer be able to complete transactions. To solve this, the Vabble core team would need to create a new pool on another L2 and migrate everyone to the new chain.

However, we are optimistic that this will not happen and Coinbase/Optimism will have their sequencers decentralized some time this year or early next year. Yet, this is important information you should consider when making your decision. Decentralization is the core of blockchain and having a single point of failure can be catastrophic. Not to Vabble per say, but to the BASE Network.

Polygon Network:

For 3 years, we have been building on the Polygon Ecosystem in company with the Ethereum blockchain as our main focus for token growth and liquidity. From an ecosystems perspective, Polygon has a strong position technically (low tx fees + block times) and it suits the needs of Vabble, however, fundamentally it is not in a good place for smaller, less known projects.

Note: we do not use ethereum.org resources as we are not explicitly releasing product on ethereum mainchain due to exceptionally high gas fees.

Polygon is focused on developing business with either well established projects, such as the grant offered to Delabs to the sum of $2M USD to migrate their community and NFTs from Solana, as a means to onboard users into Polygon from other chains, and it appears Polygon are focused on working with major brands and corporations in “WEB2” such as Nike, Starbucks, Mastercard to name a few.

Looking to the average WEB3 user (retail), there is not much interest in Polygon based projects.

Using NFTs as a first example, the Polygon chain on opensea has 20 ETH+ of volume in the past 24 hours (as of 23.04.24) across the top 10 collections compared to bases 50 ETH+ although Polygon is 3 years more mature and established compared to base.

As for Polygon native trading, the primary solution is {Quickswap}(https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/quickswap). The statistics are dismal. It has 2M in 24 hour volume across 375 coins of which 59 have a “good” volume trust score, 87 “fair”, 3 “poor”, leaving 226 not even reported.

Additionally, the Quickswap Exchange traded volume over the past year has not really seen much in terms of growth during this net positive period of the cycle.

Quickswap

Looking to uniswap as a measure of volume traded on each main L2 will help us validate the above even further:

Polygon:

OPTIMISM:

BASE

Speculative traders and daily users are not active on the Polygon network, with a low $89M in volume traded, when compared to Bases $236M. This puts Vabble in a very tough position to build community and drive adoption of the token and product with such low usage of Polygon.

Looking at Base in the same time frame, it has almost triple the volume.

Marketing the project to ethereum users has provided us with some strong fundamentals however, as we move closer to launch, the ethereum side of VAB (the token) is fundamentally useless to utility aside from trading and the fees to trade on ethereum will only grow as the cycle moves on, which reduces our exposure to retail liquidity, curbing our growth even further.

Furthermore, the user experience for potential users of the Vabble platform, buying on ethereum (most of the token volume) and then bridging to Polygon VAB via our native bridge is not a very user-friendly solution. Ideally, people would buy VAB on Polygon however, very few use Polygon.

With BASE, users will buy VAB on BASE and stake, vote, watch, trade, all on the one chain. No bridging or swapping.

The combination of a chain with little activity, ethereum's high fees and onboarding friction, puts Vabble in a very tough position to grow from.

Meanwhile, Base is only growing by the day with multiple grants available, low token saturation, and opportunity to further strengthen our relationship with coinbase, which has been developing for many months. Without having to re-write any smart contracts, Base as an L2 solution for Vabble is the obvious choice. That is the beauty of building on L2s.

Implementation of Technical change:

The technical change that we would be required to undertake is not difficult and could be achieved in 2 to 3 weeks.

How the migration process works:

1. A new contract would be created on the BASE network and a token generation event would take place. The supply of VAB will remain the same.

2. At a to be determined date, a snapshot of all VAB token holders will take place on Ethereum and Polygon. Those holding on Bitmart will also be included in the snapshot.

3. The Base VAB token would be airdropped to all holders included in the snapshot on a 1:1 basis.

4. Allow us to recapture the 136 million VAB stuck in the defunct multichain bridge.

5. Our liquidity pools are currently separated between Polygon and Ethereum. With a full migration, we will be able to compound these pools into one single pool on BASE Network increasing our LP making the token even more attractive.

6. All users will be airdropped their VAB 1:1. Right before the airdrop snapshot, the liquidity will be removed from Ethereum and Polygon.

7. Once these processes are complete, the VAB DAO smart contracts will launch on BASE Network and we will launch Staking and Governance.

Timeline:

• 7 Day VIP Proposal Voting Period.
• 2 to 3 Weeks of upgrades and preparation.
• Base Launch + Staking + Governance Launch: Thursday 23rd of May (ESTIMATED).

Conclusion:

The Vabble project has a purpose built product, strong team, high level executive board, real use case, strong tokenomics, and a good working track record. The core pieces of the puzzle we are missing are community and token adoption, both of which rely heavily on marketing to a chain’s community. Given the product, as of today, is launching on Polygon, marketing to potential users is difficult given not so many users are interested in Polygon based projects.

Migrating will address many of the issues we face as a project, a small community, and a founding team, allowing us to build and grow and be supported by a more encouraging network

Signed. Vabble Core Team.