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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.
The road to mainnet
Azul didn’t appear overnight. The upgrade was announced around April 21-22, 2026, with a testnet version going live almost immediately after. The mainnet activation was targeted for May 13, 2026, and the team hit that window.
Before flipping the switch, Base ran a $250,000 bug bounty program through Immunefi that concluded on May 4, 2026. That bounty gave security researchers roughly two weeks to poke holes in the upgrade before it touched real user funds. No user action was required for the transition.
What this means for investors and the broader market
Azul’s one-day withdrawal finality directly addresses one of the most common user complaints about optimistic rollups. Seven-day exit windows have been a friction point that pushes some users toward centralized bridges or competing chains with faster settlement.
The multiproof system also raises the security bar by running two independent proof mechanisms, meaning an attacker would need to compromise both TEE hardware and ZK cryptography simultaneously to exploit the system.
The progression toward Stage 2 decentralization is perhaps the most strategically important aspect of the upgrade. Stage 2 represents the point at which a rollup’s security relies entirely on its proof system rather than any trusted party, including the team that built it.
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