Fire in Winter
Fire does not depend on hype, it depends on friction, and the friction between Web2 and Web3 continues
This canto returns to the 2022–2023 winter, before Base opened publicly. Preparatory work continued through the downturn. Testnet was announced in February 2023, followed by builder access in July and public access in August. The applications below belong to the post-launch period, not to a Base already operating in 2022.
But fire does not depend on hype to burn. It depends on friction, and the friction between Web2 and Web3 continued regardless of ETH's price. The friction of creators who wanted real ownership of their work. The friction of people who wanted to send money internationally without losing twenty percent to intermediaries. The friction of developers who wanted to build applications without asking permission from any platform. That friction did not disappear with the bear market.
Jesse Pollak and the Base team continued building through winter with the same cadence as summer. Smart Wallet in development. Infrastructure being improved. Partnerships being formed. Developers being onboarded. The absence of a native token had removed an entire vector of speculation, without a token, there was no speculative rally to defend, no speculative collapse to survive. There was only product, working or not working.
New applications emerged on Base even in the months of least market enthusiasm. Aerodrome, Base's primary DEX, grew in real liquidity. Moonwell and Seamless expanded native DeFi on the chain. Zora brought onchain content creation to a new generation of creators. Base's forest did not grow because the market commanded growth. It grew because there were builders who found in Base the most fertile soil for the type of product they wanted to build, accessible, cheap, connected to the world's largest crypto distribution.
Surtr never sleeps. Not because he is tireless through heroism, because fire is a physical process, not a decision of will. As long as there is friction between what people need and what current systems offer, as long as there is a gap between the value blockchain can create and what people can access, Muspelheim's fire will continue burning, silently, through any winter the market decides to impose.