Base Launches its First Builder Quest & Brings New Developers Onchain
TLDR: Base is a secure, scalable, developer-friendly Layer 2 network for Ethereum — built by Coinbase with the mission to onboard the next billion people onchain. thirdweb is proud to power Base’s first Builder Quest: an onchain challenge where 1M+ wallets deployed a smart contract to the Base test network, and received a commemorative NFT — designed in partnership with digital artist Andre Oshea.
Base is bringing the next billion people onchain
Base is a secure, scalable, developer-friendly Layer 2 network on Ethereum — built by Coinbase with the mission to bring the next billion people onchain.
Base aims to make it easier than ever for developers to build decentralized applications (or dApps) that deliver value and utility, by being:
- Built on Ethereum to leverage its security & decentralization
- Created as an EVM-compatible L2 to unlock scalability
- Powered by Coinbase to make it easier than ever to onboard users with streamlined product integration, simple fiat onramps, and access to the company’s ecosystem & $130B in assets on the platform
In order to onboard the next billion people onchain, the Base team is focused on empowering developers with the tools to build great onchain apps.
To build towards this vision, Base partnered with thirdweb to create the Base Builder Quest: an onchain challenge designed for developers to learn how to deploy a smart contract on Base, & reward them with a commemorative NFT — designed by digital artist Andre Oshea.
Introducing the Base Builder Quest: An onchain challenge
The Base Builder Quest is an onchain challenge for early builders to deploy a smart contract on Base, and to earn a commemorative NFT on the Base testnet.
The quest walks users through deploying a smart contract on Base in a few easy steps. Here’s how it works, and how builders are able to complete it:
1. Connecting & adding funds to a web3 wallet
To begin, users must connect an Ethereum-based wallet to the website. They are then prompted to add testnet funds to their wallet — using the Base testnet faucet.
2. Deploying a smart contract on the Base testnet
After this, users must read the Base documentation to learn how to deploy a smart contract — giving them a variety of tools (including thirdweb) and asking them to verify the smart contract’s address to continue.
3. Claiming the Base Builder NFT by Andre Oshea
Once Base verifies that the smart contract was deployed by the connected wallet, the user can mint the Base Builder NFT — designed by digital artist Andre Oshea.
Bonus: When Base mainnet goes live, those who completed the quest will be eligible to claim a second NFT.
Powering the first-ever Base Builder Quest
The turnout for the Base Builder Quest was huge:
In less than a month, over 1 million wallets deployed a smart contract on Base & claimed their commemorative NFT.
thirdweb is proud to have powered the Base Builder NFT, providing the team with everything they needed to create a seamless flow & claim experience:
- Easy web3 auth: Base implemented thirdweb’s seamless Connect Wallet UI component, with a beautifully-designed connect flow & built-in wallet onboarding for new users.
- Simple deployment flow: The team deployed the Builder NFT smart contract to the Base testnet seamlessly — using thirdweb’s step-by-step framework, with built-in IPFS storage, to create the NFTs with Andre Oshea’s artwork.
- Signature-based minting: The team used extensions from thirdweb’s Solidity SDK to unlock advanced smart contract functionality — using signature-based minting to ensure that users could only mint the NFT if they deployed a smart contract.
- Dashboard & SDK: A personalized dashboard was automatically generated for the Base team — making it easy to manage all of their smart contracts from one place, and providing seamless tools to integrate them into their apps using the thirdweb SDK.
Let’s dive into what’s under the hood, and how the Base team used thirdweb’s web3 development kit to create its first-ever Builder Quest.
Onboarding users with an easy Connect Wallet experience
The Base team used the thirdweb Wallet SDK to integrate a seamless, beautifully-designed Connect Wallet UI component into the Quests website — built for any stack and any EVM chain, and with advanced features such as:
- Full customizability: With built-in support for the most popular connectors and 170+ wallets (including options for non-custodial, custodial, email, and smart contract wallets), users were able to connect to the Quests website with the wallet of their choice. Learn more about web3 wallets.
- Personalized user experiences: The Connect Wallet component automatically detects which wallets a user has installed on their browser, recommending them to select a wallet that they can get started with easily
- Onboarding for new users: The modal comes with an easy step-by-step flow for new users to create their first web3 wallet in minutes
Using thirdweb’s Wallet SDK, Base integrated web3-native, passwordless authentication for its Quests website — enabling users to sign in and get started in seconds — with just a few lines of code.
Learn more about thirdweb's Wallet SDK & get started:
Deploying the Base Builder NFT smart contract, with powerful custom features
To launch the Base Builder NFT, the team needed:
- A smart contract that would allow them to create an unlimited amount of individual NFTs — all using the same metadata from Andre Oshea’s artwork.
- A verification method to ensure that only users who completed the quest could mint the NFT, by deploying a smart contract to the Base testnet.
To achieve this, the Base team deployed an NFT Collection smart contract via thirdweb — then using the Solidity SDK to add custom extensions, with advanced functionality, to the pre-built smart contract.
1. Explore: A library of pre-built smart contracts for all of the most popular use cases — deployable through the thirdweb Dashboard. Learn more & get started with thirdweb Explore.
2. CLI: A step-by-step framework to deploy a smart contract in 3 simple commands. Learn more & get started with the thirdweb CLI.
One of those extensions was signature-based minting, which allowed the quest to verify whether a user had deployed a smart contract to the Base test network, in order to mint the NFT — in real-time & on a user-by-user basis.
What is signature-based minting?
Signature-based minting (or “on-demand minting”) is a mechanism that allows a wallet to generate signatures for other wallets if they meet a set of criteria determined by the smart contract — thus, allowing a user to interact with a smart contract exclusively if they have fulfilled those requirements.
This enabled users to mint the Base Builder NFT only if they had deployed a smart contract on the Base testnet.
With signature-based minting, Base’s admin wallet automatically generated signatures for the wallets that had deployed a smart contract (as specified in the smart contract), granting them permission to mint the Base Builder NFT — all on demand, and under the hood.
How does signature-based minting work?
- Wallet A generates a signature for a token (specifying name, image, description, properties, and minter address).
- Wallet B can use the signature provided by Wallet A to mint the NFT if it meets the conditions set in the smart contract.
For the Base Quest, users had to connect their wallets to participate — also being asked to enter the address of the smart contract they deployed.
Behind the scenes, the server verifies if the connected wallet is also the deployer of the smart contract submitted, through the Etherscan API.
If this is successfully verified, the Base admin wallet then provides a signature for the deployer wallet — allowing them to interact with the smart contract and mint the NFT.
“The Base Builder Quests was our first onchain quest for developers, and working with the thirdweb team helped us make it a success. thirdweb had custom features we used to smoothly manage the distribution of our Base Builder Quest NFT. They have user-friendly tools and an awesome developer experience, including hands-on support from their eng team.”
– Andrew Flockhart, Senior Engineering Manager @ Base
Learn more about how to implement signature-based minting:
Building dApps with automagically-generated web3 tools & dashboards
Once a smart contract is set up and launched, thirdweb automatically generates a personalized dashboard for the deployer wallet — allowing the Base team to manage all of their smart contracts in one place.
The dashboard also includes a Build tab, which they could use to read and write data from the contract using the thirdweb SDK.
Using the thirdweb SDK, the Base team integrated the smart contract into the Quests app to determine whether a user had deployed a smart contract to the Base testnet, and to allow them to mint the commemorative NFT if they did.The contract also allowed the Base team to set the amount of NFTs that a wallet could mint — limiting it to 1.
Base was able to determine whether a user completed the required steps, and if they had already claimed their reward, by using thirdweb’s React SDK to:
- Fetch the Base Builder NFT smart contract, and the wallet addresses of logged-in users, via the
useContractanduseAddressReact hooks - Use the smart contract’s
getHasValidKeyfunction, through theuseContractReadReact hook, to determine whether a logged-in user has deployed a smart contract to the Base testnet. - Allow a user that to mint the commemorative NFT if they've completed the required onchain actions, directly from the smart contract, through the
useContractWriteReact hook.
See the Base Builder NFT dashboard for yourself:
Empowering developers to build on Base, with thirdweb
Base’s mission is to bring the next billion people onchain, and the first step of that is to onboard developers into its ecosystem by providing them with best-in-class tools to build great web3 apps.
To execute on this, Base included thirdweb in its quest flow and documentation — teaching builders how to use the same pre-built smart contracts and step-by-step workflow that the Base team used to launch the quest.
Integrating thirdweb into the flow made it much easier for anyone to deploy a smart contract to Base, supercharging adoption and bringing more builders to the ecosystem.
Out of the 1M+ wallets that deployed a smart contract on Base testnet as part of the Builder Quest, 198k+ used thirdweb.
This means that approximately 1 out of every 5 wallets connected to the Base ecosystem via thirdweb.
Using thirdweb Explore, users could select any pre-built smart contract and customize its properties.
After filling out the contract’s parameters, users could connect to the Base Goerli Testnet and deploy their smart contract in minutes — giving them a personalized dashboard to manage the contract & use the thirdweb SDK to start building their dApps.
Deploy a smart contract & start building on Base — in minutes:
Juan Leal
Looking into the future: Expanding the Base ecosystem
As Base continues to work on its testnet & pushes to launch its mainnet, the team is excited to continue to use & provide thirdweb’s tools to builders on Base — bringing the next billion people onchain through seamless web3 apps & creating a digital economy that is global, open, and accessible to all.
From pre-built customizable smart contracts to robust SDKs for every stack, thirdweb provided the Base team with everything they needed to launch the Base Builder Quest — enabling them to focus on creating a delightful user experience.
“thirdweb made it easy to deploy, monitor, and adjust our smart contract — as well as offering a seamless way for onchain developers to participate in the Base Builder Quest.”
– Andrew Flockhart, Senior Engineering Manager @ Base
If you’d like to learn more about how thirdweb can accelerate your business & web3 development workflow, reach out to the team directly — or start building for free: