Base launches its first independent upgrade Azul, aiming to strengthen the multi-proof mechanism on May 13.

Techub News reports that Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, has officially launched its first independent network upgrade, Base Azul, on the testnet, with the mainnet activation planned for May 13, 2026. This upgrade marks Base's first network-level update independent of the OP Stack, aiming to significantly enhance network security, performance, and developer experience. The core components of the Azul upgrade include enabling a multi-proof mechanism to improve architectural redundancy and establishing base-reth-node as the sole execution client to further optimize processing efficiency.

Furthermore, Base will adopt the latest execution layer specification (Osaka) through Azul, ensuring its technical architecture remains highly consistent with the Ethereum mainnet. Officials emphasized that this upgrade is completely transparent to ordinary users, who do not need to take any action to benefit from the enhanced network environment. As a crucial step toward Base's technological independence, the release of Azul signals that the network is gradually building a differentiated competitive advantage among Layer 2 scaling solutions.