Builder Codes Are LIVE on Base: Rewards, ERC-8021, Profiles & New Base.dev Features Explained

Hello Dan. How's it going?

Yo, good man. How are you? It's been a while.

It has been a while. Uh, I hear you're in New York. Where are you? What's going on? What's going on in New York?

Yeah, so um at an offsite right now in New York at the New York office. Um I love it here. Wish I was here all the time. Um yeah, no, just getting the team together. Uh launched a feature this morning that we're going to talk about and yeah, shipped some things.

uh last week and and the week before that. Yeah. We can cover too.

Yeah. Uh that's exactly what we're here to talk about what you guys shipped. Last time we were on the call uh we had actually just shipped like the preview tool. I think it was base dev as a whole like we you know we're talking about what what shipped and like sort of like the tools available for many app developers. Um and so now we've added some more stuff to our site.

Uh it's really there to it's really building out to be that hub that analytical sort of like dashboard for base developers, not just mini app developers. And we're going to get into that, but um yeah, I'm excited to talk about where uh some of the things we ship.

Yeah, dude. Um yeah, where should we start?

Yeah, so I think first place to start and are you okay with like sharing your screen and and just like walking through a couple things as well?

Yeah, absolutely. Let me do that right now.

Cool. Yeah, I mean I think one of the first things on the ship list I think uh would be maybe we talk about profiles right because it you know one it's it's not a new product but more of a feature that is being included in in in base.dev. Um I want to know more about that like kind of like why and you know what this enables uh for uh builders. I know we're doing rewards.

Um, it's a small feature, but I think uh it's going to be really good and beneficial over the long term of like just staying in contact with with bass and uh being able to earn rewards and and communicate and have that open line of uh comms with us. Whenever you're ready, you can uh share your screen.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, um no, this is a good place to start because it's it's a small but interesting feature for sure.

Um so, we're looking here at base dev, right? So, you know, a lot of folks have seen this, although uh if you haven't logged in today, this might look different than what you're normally used to. Um, and we'll definitely cover, you know, all the things that have changed, but yeah, let's talk about this, like I said, small but really interesting, uh, feature that we added here. So, um, one of the things that, you know, base dev is going to be longer term is going to be where, um, you know, we're measuring your, uh, onchain transactions, off-chain transactions, that sort of thing. and just like how much um action does your mini app or or non- mini app as we're going to get to um like have and and you know like how how are folks using base through your app?

And um one of the things we're going to eventually need to do is start reaching out to folks um you know like updating you about things like maybe new product launches or once uh things like rewards start uh ramping up um you know maybe there's information there that we're going to have to talk to you about. So, one of the things that we were going to need in order to do like more proactive communication obviously is things like name and email address and um like as you know we use base accounts on base dev um to uh for people to connect and we hooked into a neat new feature of base accounts uh called base profiles where you can actually uh save that information to your base profile and then share it with apps. Uh so this is something that's going to be available to all apps in the future. uh we're just one of the earlier consumers. It's still an experimental feature, so things might change.

Um but yeah, so if you yeah, if you've not filled out your uh profile, then you're going to see this update your personal information card. If I click update here, um you should be able to see my like the base account pop up with my information that I provided. So my name Daniel Cortez and my email address is not dan@acample.com, but I did set it to that so I wasn't doxing it myself. Um but yeah, so if I hit continue here, um the card goes away and when I go to manage personal info, you can see that that information is here.

Um so I can also, you know, decide whether or not I want to receive marketing uh emails. If you opt out, we'll still email you about like important uh business specific things. You just won't get any like marketing or like feature update emails, and you can always delete your uh profile information. Um yeah, so uh big shout out to the base account team for making this available to apps, right? Because like this is almost like um I think of it kind of like OOTH where it's like a system that like you know we don't have to maintain.

They provide that information for us or or to us rather and we just get to like really easily use it.

Yeah man, this is a really small but mighty feature. uh I'm thinking you know in the future when we you know I mean not even in the future right now when we are doing uh product testing and doing like beta and alpha testing we often want to work with a small subset of developers and I think this is going to be one of a really great way to reach out to many app developers because one um we can all see onchain analytics we can see uh ones who are you know helping to drive a lot of traffic to base and then you know whether when we want to get some feedback on some new apps apps or you know product features. It's like you know who who better to uh reach out to to test an app and like this makes it so much easier to reach those uh those applications.

Yeah, for sure. And then you know on the flip side too like as we build more things out as we add new features I think like it's just a good way to to be able to communicate what we're shipping uh with builders.

Definitely. Another thing that we added uh on here really quickly in settings was uh members. I don't think a lot of people know that. I you know previously we had to uh you know add it in our manifest but you want can you talk a little bit uh about members?

Yeah for sure. So this is um it's not that new but like you know we we definitely have not uh we didn't do like a video about it. Uh some folks might not know. Um but yeah so in um in your settings for an app you can actually now add multiple uh different viewers essentially. Um, here I have my, you know, my 8021 guestbook app.

Uh, and I can go to settings, go to members, and add folks here. So, if I have, like, you know, for instance, your base account, I'd be able to post it on here. Uh, hit save and then you'd be able to access the analytics for that project. Um, it gives you like view only access, so like you can't add other members or manage or anything like that. Uh but you'll get to see you know the the analytics the the usage of your app which could be really useful um you know for any projects that have multiple members on the team.

Definitely. Um so most apps today aren't uh mini apps like right most apps on base today aren't mini apps and while base build started off as the platform for you to drive and you know grow analy uh view analytics on your mini app um we are we made a change to serve more of these just broad base app developers right builders on base um we wanted to include them into the reward board system. Um, and I kind of want to talk a little bit more about that because developers are always looking for ways to earn to grow their their ecosystem, their their you know, their app as well. Um, and we made a small another these these are like you know kind of like these small changes but it changes the the dynamics of how uh builders are uh you know building their apps and how you know even like the developer experience as well. Um and so I want to talk about the move um away from adding the uh base builder object in our manifest to using app ids.

Yeah, for sure. I I think I would like kind of like position this as actually like you know whereas previously um you know base build was for mini app only or mini apps only now it's actually for any app that has uh onchain transaction. So like we have not dropped support for mini apps. You know all the things that you could um all the analytics you could see in terms of mini apps are still there. Uh but now we're actually making another type of um analytics available to you and that's actual transactions that are happening on chain through the base app.

Um, so a lot of things had to come together for this and um, we've actually kind of revamped the the whole UX of the base build product to accommodate for this. And I think yeah, maybe let's uh just go through the flow a little bit of like what it uh what it means to add a new app now. So, you know, I've logged in here. I'm looking at an existing app, but say that I had another one that I've been working on. Um, I'm just going to go to register another app.

I'm going to give it a name. Let's uh call it like on stream since we're on a stream right now. U we're going to register that. So where previously um you know you would have to paste your app URL um and then we would fetch the forecaster JSON and made sure that the you know that that the right owner was set so that we could verify that you actually own the app that you're telling us. um we've kind of simplified this flow so that now you just tell us like you know what's the name of your app and then uh we will verify.

So in order to verify now, and we did have to change this. So this no longer relies on the base builder key in your Farcaster JSON since we're supporting more than just mini apps. Um we moved to a system now where we're uh expecting you to have just a meta tag with the name of base app ID and then some value um in the in the head of your project. Right? So if you're using uh for instance like Nex.

js, JS we provide some convenient code snippets for you to like integrate that easily. Um but at the end of the day I think this is very in line with how most like analytics platforms work you know like if you want to if you're using like Google Analytics for instance you have like some tag that you just have to add to your website to to start tracking. Um so we definitely you know borrowed some inspiration from those systems. Um, and then once you add this to the head of your app and you give us your URL, then we can verify that you know you uh actually own this domain since you were able to modify the code. Uh, right.

So obviously well I I don't have a onream app. So let's go look at an app that um we have been using to test and this is a mini app. Um, so I guess I'll mention that like the features that we're talking about, they're not just, you know, it's not just for non- mini apps. It actually applies to mini apps as well, but now you can actually get uh some onchain analytics if you happen to not be a mini app. Um, but let's start with the mini app side of things.

So now um when you're looking at your dashboard here, we're looking at analytics. We have this drop down that says offchain uh and then onchain. So offchain is the analytics that we've been providing uh up until this point. So we have your daily active users, number of opens, total session time. All this stuff is data that's been available and um data that we're capturing like automatically from uh folks on the base app.

And the new thing over here is um onchain which is transactions originating from the base app that are actually landing on chain. So this is uh to a totally new type of data. Um you can see how many users have actually submitted onchain transactions um through your mini app. So on December 3rd where I was uh you know doing some testing uh there were some uh onchain transactions that were submitted. Uh you can see like how many of those were first time how many were returning users um how much gas was spent on those transactions and how much uh of that gas was subsidized by pay master.

And in this case um you know kind of neat if you're using the base app a lot of times you do not have to pay um any any gas fees because the pay master subsidies will take care of it. So this is going to capture uh essentially all onchain analytics for basically any um any app that you have added to uh base build. Right? So once you register your app uh on base build we create a builder code which we'll talk about what that is in a second and then the base app will automatically insert that builder code with transactions which um those those builder codes actually land on chain and we get to uh be able to provide this data uh to users.

Yeah, this is this is sick. Um, one question because I imagine people are going to be watching this on the YouTube or and they're like they're already hitting like command tab. They're, you know, they're heading over to base.dev. Um, if you're an existing app, right, uh, I imagine there's nothing you need to do right now, but what what like Yeah.

What what what thoughts you have for existing apps? Like um do they need to go ahead and update that uh their, you know, metadata to include this? Uh, what are your thoughts?

Yeah. No. So, um yeah, let's just be super clear that um this verification step, right?

This is only to add the like to to verify ownership of a given URL. So, for any apps that have been created uh prior to this, you've already done that by using that base builder um owner address, I believe the field is. Um so, yeah, absolutely nothing that you need to do. All of your uh apps that you've already added will continue to work as is.

Awesome. Making it easy. Um actually you mentioned it and and we might as well dive into it a little bit more. Uh builder codes, right? So builder codes, this is something uh that allows um developers to attribute uh you know all the work that they've done transactions uh and kind of have some sort of attribution to uh how they're contributing to a network particular network or a particular app.

Right? So, if Dan has an app and I'm driving traffic to Dan's app, I should be able to one see how much volume and and and and users that I'm bringing to Dan's app, but also an easy way to get, you know, compensated or rewarded for that uh you know, help that I'm you know, helping to drive uh revenue to Dan's app. We're using a transaction attribution standard called 8021 to do this. Can you tell us more about builder codes 8021 more broadly and how it fits into base build?

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, the way that I would think about builder codes um and I will put a big asterisk here and and say that you know this standard is still like a work in progress. So there are things that may change but I think the general idea is is pretty solid and and that is that like when apps submit transactions on chain we essentially up until this point haven't had a standardized way to know like what is um you know like who's responsible for ultimately like landing that transaction right so um you know if you have like some uh front end for instance that is like generating like all this onchain traffic um we'd love to be able to recognize that and be like, "Hey, like you know, maybe this is uh something that's worth uh like rewarding." Uh but like how do we know where that transaction like originated from, right? Um and builder codes uh kind of let us do that.

So we um actually Connor Swornberg who is uh an engineer here uh and is just absolutely awesome has come up with this ERC 8021 standard which you know like I mentioned still agraph um but side note would recommend anybody who's interested in this sort of thing to to actually go read the EIP it's very interesting um but at a high level this defines a method for actually getting that attribution onchain and the very very short um explanation of how that happens is so when you submit a transaction on chain, right? You have some smart contract with like a function that expects some arguments. Let's say it's it's just like a string. Um there's nothing really stopping somebody from then adding some additional data after the the data that's going to go on chain. Um and the contract just kind of ignores it because it's like, oh, like you know, I have this function that you want to call with the string that you told me.

Uh anything after that, I'll just ignore. So um what the standard kind of does is define uh like a structured way to uh structure that data that we're going to attach at the end of the transaction which we can then uh essentially decode. So uh like the specifics like here you can actually see uh like what that schema looks like for um actually for for different schemas because there's a couple ways you can actually do this. Um, but if we look here and like honestly a lot of these details don't matter, but you can see that there's like some transaction data and then here it says base app and then there's just some numbers. Ignore that for a second.

Your builder code is in this case uh what it here it's the example is base app but these are going to be uh unique identifiers that when you add your app to base build we will create one for you and then in the base app when somebody trans uh submits a transaction on chain from your app we're doing a little bit of magic behind the scenes to um add that builder code to the AD21 standard that we're um attaching to the the transaction data. So then after that data lands on chain with a builder code that refers back to you, then anybody that uh is looking at the onchain data can say, "Hey, I found a transaction that has the AD21 standard and the builder code identifies your app. Therefore, um this transaction should be like attributed to having come from your app." Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense to me. I'm going to kind of summarize it. So, we talked about a base app ID, which is how uh we can you prove ownership of our application. This is a very common standard. Um you know, Google Analytics has has done this as well.

But builder codes specifically are uh more of a a newer ontrain way to show attribution um and kind of say you know who's responsible for a transaction and be able to pay out rewards because I I took a peek at the smart contract. There is a an address where rewards are are paid out to. Um you know these are two separate concepts but one is more so specific on ownership of an application. One is uh a unique identifier. So that when we are uh making transactions on change, we have we have uh this sort of like trail of like saying who should be credited for what um in a less like crypto term.

But how did I do on the the regurgitation of that?

Yeah. No, I think uh yeah, you nailed it. So I think for me the big uh takeaways the big things to remember is so when you are when you're looking at this modal and it's like you know verify um you have this base app ID with like you know a random string for the content. This is not your builder code. This is just your app ID.

It's how we're doing verification as you mentioned. Um your builder code right now we are not showing it in um like anywhere on here. like if you're technical, you can you can find it somewhere in some network request. Um but the reason we're not like making it like putting it front and center is that as it stands right now like the base app will automatically insert that um you do not have to do anything to get those base app um attributions on chain. If somebody submits well if your app is registered on base build and somebody uses the base app to submit a transaction from your app you'll get credited small asterisk there is that they have to be on on one of the later versions of the base app.

Um but I feel like you know people are actually pretty good about updating that app from what I've seen. So yeah for for the most part it will we'll be capturing basically like close to 100% of those transactions. Um eventually as we um you know solidify the 8021 standard, as we like nail exactly what the developer experience is going to be for um doing attribution outside of the base app, we will provide guidance to folks on on how to do that. As of right now, there's literally like nothing you have to do, which is pretty awesome. Uh to be honest, uh the first time that I actually um saw this working without me, you know, needing to change anything in my in my app that I made, the 8021 guestbook app.

Um quick quick aside, if anybody that like either on the base app or Farcaster like uh saw that app that I was demoing and like submitted a transaction, thank you so much. Uh because you were helping me uh test test this stuff out. Um but yeah, as a developer, just register your app on base and everything else just kind of works. Yes, I actually love that's like one of my favorite parts is that you guys are handling a lot of stuff for us. Um, and it's not like builder rewards is something you don't want to, you know, mess up, right?

Because you're like, if I am driving this traffic, I kind of do want credit for my my my work, right? Um, and the fact that you guys are just taking care of this for many app uh developers and uh within TBA, it's just like it's a side of release and it almost works like magically. So that's that's awesome. You talked about an application that you built. I feel like we should see the app and then we should see what an 8021 transaction looks like on chain.

Um, are you down for that? Like should we do that?

Yeah. No, let's do it. Uh, you know, live demos sometimes they don't. So, I will apologize in advance if it doesn't, but yeah. So, basically, um, here I've got this opening, uh, open in the simulator.

So, can you see the iPhone 17, but nice. Okay. So, I'm running the base app here. And, uh, yeah, I made this ERC 8021 guestbook uh, app. There's a smart contract behind this that uh you basically just can write a little message to it.

And this is what I was using to made make sure that everything works, right? So, um I almost feel like this isn't worth mentioning, but in case people are are curious. So, here we have a text area. I wrote hello world. You know, I'll put a smiley face on there, too.

And then we have um two sections with attribution and without attribution. And within those two sections, there's two buttons. Write contract and send calls. Okay, so first write contract and send calls are just two different ways to submit transactions on chain. Uh write contract is the more traditional way.

Um send calls lets you do some uh interesting things like batch transaction. So if you've ever needed to like, you know, approve a um ERC20 token, spend and then do a separate transaction to actually do something with it. um send calls is this awesome uh functionality that I think was also pioneered by the the base team which is just great. Um that lets you submit both of those like at the same time. Um so on the base app whether or not you're using write contract or send calls the automatic automatic attribution will work.

Um so that's great. The reason that there's with attribution and without attribution is that if somebody right now wants to go and like read the the spec and like add their own um builder code manually, you can do so and we will totally honor that in the base app, but you won't get the automatic attribution. This should not matter for like 99.999% of people. If you are jumping the gun and trying to use the 8021 standard like you know before it's it's really finalized and everything like more power to you go go for it.

But if you provide your own uh builder code using the AD221 attribution standard we'll pass that through and we won't do any sort of automatic attribution. So, confusingly enough, if I want to submit this hello world signature uh onto my guest book, um and I'll do it using calls, um I'm going to here show it without attribution, which means I didn't manually add an attribution. So, all right, I'm going to confirm this. And awesome. So, we just submitted a transaction on chain um using my uh I think it's like Dan C1 test account.

Yeah.

Uh which is actually over here. Um so this is the transactions that my uh yeah DNC test one base um has submitted here I can see that we uh submitted a transaction 17 seconds ago. I'm going to click in this transaction hash and I click uh more details and actually I think there's like a weird UI bug in base scan. Um if I go look at the aa transactions and I open this up. So we submitted that from the base app right and the base app included this uh at the end of the input data.

I don't know if you can see this but it ends in

uh 8021 8021 8021 which this is following that um 8021 standard. Right. So the 821 standard says um in order to use this the very very end of the transaction must end with 8021 8021 and so on so forth. And if we actually grab this and we can go to a hexto string decoder um we will see two things. One well we'll see three things.

The first is uh what looks like euro signs and and exclamation marks. That is just uh how some of this data gets encoded. Uh you can basically just ignore that. But we see BC MNIP which I know is the base app's builder code. So the base app is able to like um also use this to be like how many transactions has the base app uh submitted.

So you can have more than one builder code per transaction. Uh and we're using this to um essentially like figure out like how many transactions are coming from the base app. And then here you can see uh BC1 VQ1 K Y1 which is uh my app's builder code which was automatically added. Again the the way that you implement this is like do nothing. It will just work.

If you your app is on base dev that builder code will make it on chain. We'll be able to uh do the attribution. And if I get lucky maybe this has already been indexed. And we can see that on December 9th, literally just now, a transaction was submitted. Like this is like basically real time.

Um yeah, would would definitely recommend that folks that are building apps on on base um just sign up for Bass Dab if you haven't done so already. Add your app, you get free analytics.

Perfect. This is great. Like I feel like we went end to end on the features that we released from user profiles uh you know you know this one wasn't new but like we talked about members you know adding team members to your app so they can see the dashboard as well and then we went into uh app ownership proving app ownership and then builder codes and then we saw a live example of actually going from here here's this application that's in base app let's make a transaction seeing it on chain, not just see the transaction land on chain, but a 8021 transaction and how that looks like and how you can easily verify, you know, even like the codes uh on there and like anyone can go ahead and verify that. Um, this is this has been amazing. Um, I know you're at an offsite and there's there's, you know, crazy backto-back meetings.

Uh, I guess what would you want builders to uh take away? Like what should they do right now? Um, after seeing this video,

um, I mean, yeah, the the main thing really is, uh, if you're if you're building on base and you care about the the users that are coming from the base app, which, you know, still in beta, but I think the clock is like it's real close to counting down to that that time when we go into the, you know, like widely available release. Yeah, if you care about those users, which you know, they're about to the number of users is about to get a whole lot bigger soon. Just make sure that you've signed up for base dev, you've added your your uh app, and yeah, if you've already done that and you have um onchain transactions, like go check it out. Uh as long as people are uh submitting transactions on chain, we'll be able to show you those metrics.

Awesome. Um well, there you have it, everyone. Uh stay tuned for more. probably will not be the last time you see Dan, especially when it comes to the base build uh team. There's so much more in the pipeline.

Um go go ahead and head over to bass.dev to register your app and you know test out a lot of the new features. Give us some feedback. Um and stay bass, man. Thank you so much, Dan.

Yeah. No, thank thank you for having me again. This is always uh one of my favorite things to do. Uh and hopefully we'll see each other uh soon.

Yeah, man. See you soon.