Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase, officially activated the B20 token standard on its mainnet today, June 26, at 18:00 UTC, following a 24-hour delay tied to the B20 Activation Registry. The upgrade, part of the Beryl hard fork, was originally slated for June 25 but was postponed after developers identified a timing dependency: the registry, which controls B20’s feature flags, requires up to an hour after the hard fork to become fully operational.
The B20 standard represents a departure from traditional smart-contract-based tokens like ERC-20. Instead, B20 embeds token logic directly into the chain protocol using Rust precompiles inside Base’s node software. This design reduces reliance on external contracts, slashes gas costs, and improves security. It also ships with a built-in compliance toolkit that includes role-based access, transfer policies, and freeze-and-seize controls, making it particularly attractive for stablecoin and real-world-asset issuers.
Beyond the token standard, the Beryl hard fork cuts the standard single-proof withdrawal delay from Base to Ethereum from 7 days to 5 and integrates Reth V2, which reduces node storage overhead by up to 50%. Separately, Base experienced a roughly two-hour block production outage on June 25 due to a consensus failure that inserted an invalid block into the sequencing pipeline; the team confirmed the incident was unrelated to the planned upgrade.
Developers can now deploy B20 tokens once the Activation Registry is live, a process that may take one hour after the hard fork activates. Base’s next scheduled upgrade, Cobalt, is targeted for September and is expected to add native account abstraction and additional B20 features.
