Base Denim Upgrade Goes Live on Mainnet With Native 200ms Blocks

Base has activated its Denim upgrade on mainnet, the network's official account confirmed on Nov. 5, delivering native 200ms block times alongside two supporting changes: BaseTime, a timing mechanism built for millisecond precision, and a set of B20 improvements.

The activation lands on the date Base had previously signaled. On Oct. 29, the network said Denim would cut block times to 200ms on Nov. 5, with Base lead jessepollak amplifying guidance for builders ahead of the switch. The mainnet deployment on Nov. 5 fulfills that schedule.

What changes

Block times fall to 200 milliseconds natively on the network, rather than through an add-on. BaseTime is described by the network as providing millisecond precision for timing, a requirement for applications that depend on fine-grained ordering and latency. B20, which Base has previously referred to as its native token standard, also receives improvements as part of the release. Base ran a DevCon Mumbai workshop session on B20 during Nov. 3-5.

Base is the Ethereum Layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase and led by Jesse Pollak, built on the OP Stack and settling to Ethereum. It has no native token; transactions are paid in ETH.

The upgrade is the second network-level change Base has shipped in recent months, following the Cobalt upgrade that brought validity transactions to mainnet in late September. Builders on Base will now be working against a faster block cadence, which the network has framed as groundwork for latency-sensitive onchain applications.