Welcome back to Inside DeFi Coinbase-founded Base has decided to shun optimism, DeFi platforms are shutting down, and Discord has caused a new crypto controversy around its use of age verification technology. Elsewhere, Artificial Intelligence (AI) benchmarks suggest that AI is more useful to exploit protocols than patch them. Optimism’s glass is looking (more than) half empty Coinbase’s Base network announced this week that it would be pursuing a “new, unified stack,” leaving Optimism’s OP Stack infrastructure and moving to its own Base Chain. Faster shipping, a simpler architecture, and Ethereum alignment are the three objectives Base claims for the decision