Tag Archives: base

000BCH, 07 - Reference

Base Network Reference

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Base Network Reference.

If you’re doing any blockchain development at NZRT, Base is one of the networks you’ll be working with regularly. This episode covers the key parameters, useful contracts, and how to configure your local Hardhat setup for both the mainnet and testnet environments.

So first, let’s talk about what Base actually is. Base is a Layer 2 blockchain network built on top of Ethereum, developed by Coinbase. Like Ethereum, it uses ETH as its currency and gas token. The important thing to understand is that NZRT works with two versions of the Base network. There’s Base Mainnet, which is the live production network where real transactions happen with real value. And then there’s Base Sepolia, which is the testnet — a sandbox environment where you can develop and test without spending real money.

Let’s go through the network parameters for both. Each network has what’s called a Chain ID, which is a unique number that identifies the network to your tools and wallets. For Base Mainnet, that Chain ID is 8453. For Base Sepolia testnet, it’s 84532. You’ll need these numbers when configuring wallets or development tools.

Both networks use ETH as the currency, though on the testnet it’s test ETH with no real-world value.

For connecting to the networks, you have two RPC endpoint options — think of these as the addresses your tools use to talk to the blockchain. The public RPC for Base Mainnet is mainnet.base.org, and for the testnet it’s sepolia.base.org. If you’re using Alchemy for a more reliable connection, there are dedicated Alchemy endpoints for both networks that include your API key as part of the URL.

For browsing transactions and contracts on-chain, the explorer for Base Mainnet is basescan.org, and for the testnet you’d go to sepolia.basescan.org. These are essentially search engines for the blockchain — you can look up wallet addresses, transactions, and contract details.

If you need to move ETH between Ethereum and Base, the bridge for mainnet is bridge.base.org. For the testnet, you’d use testnets.superbridge.app. And speaking of the testnet — if you need test ETH to actually run transactions in the Sepolia environment, you can get it free from the Coinbase faucet at coinbase.com/faucets. There’s no faucet needed for mainnet since that uses real ETH.

One more useful number: the block time on both networks is approximately 2 seconds. That means transactions confirm pretty quickly compared to Ethereum mainnet.

Now let’s look at two important contract addresses you’ll use frequently on Base Mainnet. A contract address is a fixed location on the blockchain where a specific token or smart contract lives. The first is USDC — the USD Coin stablecoin — which lives at an address starting with 0x8335. The second is WETH, which stands for Wrapped Ether, and that lives at an address starting with 0x4200. You’ll need these addresses any time you’re interacting with those tokens programmatically. Make sure you grab the exact full addresses from the wiki rather than typing them manually — contract addresses are case-sensitive and errors can be costly on mainnet.

Now let’s cover the Hardhat configuration. Hardhat is a development environment for building and deploying smart contracts. The code block in the wiki shows how to add Base Mainnet and Base Sepolia as named networks in your Hardhat config file. What it’s doing is defining two network entries. The first, called base-mainnet, points to your Alchemy Base Mainnet URL — which you store as an environment variable so it stays out of your code — and it uses your private key, also stored as an environment variable, to sign transactions. It also specifies that Chain ID of 8453 so Hardhat knows exactly which network it’s talking to. The second entry does the same thing for Base Sepolia, pointing to the Alchemy Sepolia URL and using Chain ID 84532. Once these entries are in your config, you can deploy or run scripts against either network just by passing the network name in your Hardhat command.

A quick note on environment variables — you’ll notice the config references things like your Alchemy URL and private key pulled from the environment rather than hardcoded. That’s intentional. Never put API keys or private keys directly in your config files. Store them in a dot-env file locally and make sure that file is excluded from version control.

For further reading, the wiki cross-references three related topics: the broader Ethereum and Base Network page, the Alchemy integration notes, and the Hardhat documentation. If you’re setting up a new project or onboarding to NZRT’s blockchain stack for the first time, those are worth working through in that order.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.

000BCH, 01 - Core Concepts

Ethereum Base Network

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Ethereum & Base Network.

So first, a quick framing note. NZRT deploys on Base, which is a low-cost Ethereum Layer 2 network built by Coinbase. Base settles back to Ethereum’s main chain, so you get the security of Ethereum with much lower costs. That’s the core reason NZRT uses it, and it’ll make more sense as we walk through the pieces.

Let’s start with some Ethereum basics, because you need these to understand everything that follows.

Ethereum is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain. Think of it as the foundation — it’s a smart contract platform, meaning you can deploy programs directly onto it that run without a central server. The thing that actually runs those programs is called the EVM, short for Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EVM executes the bytecode of smart contracts, and it runs the same way on every node in the network, which is how you get trustless, consistent execution.

The language most developers use to write those smart contracts is called Solidity. If you’ve seen any Ethereum development work, you’ve probably come across it.

Now, running code on Ethereum costs something. That cost is measured in units called gas. Gas is just the unit of computation — every operation in a smart contract uses a certain amount of it, and you pay for that gas in ETH, which is Ethereum’s native currency.

Speaking of ETH, it’s worth knowing the denominations. The smallest unit is called Wei. One ETH equals ten to the power of eighteen Wei — so an enormous number. In practice, when people talk about gas prices, they usually use Gwei, which is one billion Wei. You’ll see Gwei come up a lot in tooling and configuration, so it’s good to have that in your vocabulary.

Now let’s talk about Base specifically.

Base is what’s called an Optimistic Rollup. That’s a type of Layer 2 solution where transactions are processed off the main Ethereum chain, but the results are periodically posted back to Ethereum for final settlement. The “optimistic” part means transactions are assumed to be valid unless someone challenges them. This approach lets you dramatically reduce costs while still inheriting Ethereum’s security guarantees.

Base was built by Coinbase, its native token is ETH just like Ethereum, and its block time is around two seconds — much faster than Ethereum’s main chain. If you ever need to look up a transaction on Base, the block explorer is at basescan dot org. There’s also a testnet version of Base called Base Sepolia, which is where you’d go to test things without spending real money.

Two numbers worth memorising: the Chain ID for Base Mainnet is 8453, and for the Base Sepolia Testnet it’s 84532. You’ll need these when configuring wallets or developer tools.

On that note, let’s talk about how you actually configure your environment to connect to Base.

When you’re setting up a tool like MetaMask or a development framework like Hardhat to point at Base Mainnet, you’d provide a few key pieces of information. You’d name the network Base, point the connection URL to the mainnet Base endpoint — which you can get either directly from Base or through a provider like Alchemy — set the Chain ID to 8453, set the currency to ETH, and use basescan dot org as the explorer URL.

For the testnet setup — Base Sepolia — it’s the same idea. You’d name it Base Sepolia, point the connection URL to the Sepolia endpoint, use Chain ID 84532, and note that the ETH here is testnet ETH, meaning it has no real value. The explorer for testnet is at sepolia dot basescan dot org. And if you need testnet ETH to actually do anything, Coinbase runs a faucet where you can get some for free.

Faucets, by the way, are just web tools that send you small amounts of testnet currency so you can pay for gas while you’re developing and testing.

That covers the core concepts you need to work with Ethereum and Base at NZRT. To recap: Ethereum is the Layer 1 foundation, the EVM runs smart contracts written in Solidity, gas is what you pay in ETH for computation, and Wei and Gwei are the sub-units of ETH you’ll encounter in tooling. Base sits on top of Ethereum as an Optimistic Rollup — faster, cheaper, same ETH token, Chain ID 8453 for mainnet and 84532 for testnet. When you’re configuring your wallet or dev tools, those two Chain IDs are the key thing to get right.

If you want to go deeper, the wiki also links out to related topics on smart contracts, the Alchemy provider, and the contract deployment process — so those are good next reads if you’re getting hands-on with Base development at NZRT.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.