Morning Minute: Base Breaks Up With Optimism

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack. GM! Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors rebounded 1-3%, with SOL leading; BTC at $67.4k
• CME to offer 24/7 crypto futures & options trading starting May 29
• The 3rd White House meeting on stablecoin yield shows little progress
• Federal judge in Tennessee blocks state-level enforcement against Kalshi
• PUNCH meme soars 200% to $32M as the monkey goes viral

🔵 Base Breaks Up With Optimism Coinbase’s Base is going independent. Much to the chagrin of the Superchain. 📌 What Happened Base, the largest chain in the OP Stack Superchain, announced Wednesday it’s ditching Optimism’s tech stack in favor of a fully in-house codebase called base/base. OP fell as much as 20% on the news. Base published a blog post titled “A new, unified stack for Base Chain,” announcing it will consolidate its sequencer, proofs, and all core infrastructure into a single Base-managed repository.

Previously, Base relied on code from Optimism, Flashbots, and Paradigm spread across multiple teams and repos. The new stack replaces Optimism’s optimistic proofs with Base-specific TEE/ZK proofs (Base V1 hard fork, coming soon), and removes Optimism from the Base Security Council, replacing it with an independent signer. Two more hard forks are planned, with Base V3 timed around Ethereum’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade. There will be no disruption for end users, but node operators will need to migrate to base/base releases. 🗣️ What They’re Saying “The mission Base launched with is the same mission we have today: make it the best place to build and onboard the next billion people into the onchain economy. We knew that this required creating a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly home for anyone, anywhere, to build on top of. To get there quickly, Base launched as an OP Stack chain.” “To accelerate innovation, scaling and security, Base is evolving its foundational software by moving to a unified, Base-operated stack.” - from the Base announcement

Rumor mill saying Base token is coming later this year and this drove a lot of the decision making for leaving Optimism.

Hearing they will use their new stack to drive value to the token, which wasn’t previously possible.

— Andy (@andyyy) February 18, 2026

🧠 Why It Matters Here’s the number that tells the whole story: Base has historically generated over 90% of the Superchain’s total revenue. That’s the revenue that flows to the Optimism Collective—not to Coinbase, not to Base. For years, Base has been the engine powering someone else’s token.

Now that’s about to change. Base is $3.85B in TVL and the dominant L2 by activity, and now it will have more control over its economic future. This pretty much had to be done to maximize revenues, and certainly a prerequisite for any BASE token launch plans. And interestingly enough, the rumor mill has been heating up about BASE token launch plans for 2026. So overall, it’s a win for Base, a loss for Optimism and neutral for end users - unless it accelerates that BASE token launch… 

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly green after yesterday’s dip; BTC +1% at $67.4K; ETH even at $1,950; SOL +3% at $84; XRP -1% at $1.40
• KITE (+18%), Morpho (+10%) and Stable (+9%) led top movers
• Bitcoin RSI fell below 30, historically a level that has preceded rebounds
• The CME Group announced 24/7 crypto derivatives trading starting May 29, pending regulatory review
• The White House pushed the banks on stablecoin yield, telling bankers that limited activity-based stablecoin rewards would remain in the next draft of the Clarity Act
• Senator Warren spoke out against using taxpayer money to bail out Bitcoin and crypto firms
• Russia is planning to block citizens from trading crypto on overseas exchanges, with experts saying enforcement is the key open question
• Eric Trump reaffirmed his $1M Bitcoin prediction, citing long-term demand and a weaker dollar as key drivers
• Blockfills is seeking a buyer after reporting $75 million in losses

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• Sharplink reported 867,798 ETH in holdings worth ~$1.68B, noting a “record level of institutional ownership”

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were slightly green; DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP +7%, PENGU +1%, SPX -2%, FARTCOIN -1%
• **PUNCH **jumped 170% to $32M leading top movers; LOBSTAR (+60x), HODL (+12x) and Ailens (+35x) were other notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• **The DBA Fund **announced a $62M raise for its 2nd crypto fund
• **USDAi **announced its Season 2 of points, promising an airdrop for its rewards
• TradeXYZ officially launched Korean equities for perps trading
• A Federal judge in Tenessee blocked states from enforcing state-level betting laws against Kalshi (prediction markets), saying sports contracts qualify as swaps

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were flat; Punks even at 29.8 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.3 ETH, BAYC -2% at 6.1 ETH; Hypurr’s even at 500 HYPE
• **Normies (+277%), World Computer Netizens (+67%) and Del Mundos (+33%) **led top movers