Base just shipped its biggest upgrade yet. Azul, the first fully independent network upgrade for Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 chain, is now live on mainnet, bringing a multiproof security system and dramatically faster withdrawal times to a network that already holds over $7 billion in deposits.
What Azul actually changes
The headline feature is withdrawal finality. Previously, users pulling assets off Base had to wait seven days for their withdrawals to settle. Azul cuts that to a single day, provided both proof systems confirm the transaction.
That speed improvement comes from the upgrade’s new multiproof architecture. Azul combines two different types of cryptographic verification: trusted execution environment (TEE) proofs and zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs powered by Succinct’s SP1 prover. Both need to agree before funds move, which makes the system harder to exploit while simultaneously making it faster for legitimate transactions.
On the infrastructure side, node operators migrated to new streamlined clients: base-reth-node and base-consensus. This consolidation of the node software gives Base more autonomy over its technical direction and sets the foundation for future upgrades without dependency on upstream changes from other teams.
