Status: network decision approved. Testnet: Base Sepolia (84532), the only
deployable public network. Production: Base Mainnet (8453), opening at the TGE (2026-10-23T00:00:00Z); no
deployment tooling path permits it (see
deployment.md). Nothing is deployed. Contracts must stay chain-agnostic: no chain IDs, addresses or
chain-specific precompiles in contract code.
Requirements by protocol layer
| Layer | What the chain must provide |
|---|---|
| ERC-20 token | Mature EVM; standard ERC-20 support in wallets, explorers and custodians; source verification on the main explorer |
| DEX | Existing DEX liquidity and routing; reliable price oracles; block times short enough for swaps without excessive MEV exposure |
| AI payments | Low and predictable fees for frequent small payments; fast finality; account abstraction (ERC-4337) or native equivalent; stablecoin availability |
| Compute marketplace | Cheap escrow and settlement transactions; event throughput for job lifecycle updates; reliable indexing |
| DeFi | Oracle coverage (for example Chainlink); established lending and liquidity venues; established bridges for collateral |
| ZK / privacy | Cheap on-chain proof verification (BN254 pairing precompiles, EIP-4844 blobs where relevant); support for verifier contracts from the chosen proving system |
| ARL Network (future) | A credible migration or interoperability path: canonical bridge, message passing, or the option to launch a rollup settling to the chosen chain |
Evaluation criteria
Each candidate is scored on the same criteria, with sources recorded:
- Security — consensus or rollup security model, proof system status (fraud/validity proofs live or not), upgrade keys and exit windows, incident history.
- Transaction cost — measured median and p95 fees for an ERC-20 transfer and a swap over a recent 30-day window.
- Liquidity — DEX liquidity and stablecoin supply, from public dashboards.
- Ecosystem maturity — wallet, custodian and exchange support; years in production.
- Developer tooling — Foundry and Hardhat support, explorer verification APIs, testnets and faucets.
- RPC and indexing — number of independent RPC providers, archive node availability, The Graph / Ponder / Envio support.
- Listing readiness — support by CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap and major exchanges for tokens on that chain.
- Interoperability — bridge options and their security, path to a future ARL Network.
- Decentralization — sequencer and validator decentralization, and censorship-resistance guarantees.
Candidates to evaluate
Ethereum mainnet; OP Stack rollups (for example Base, OP Mainnet); Arbitrum One; ZK rollups (for example zkSync Era, Linea, Scroll); Polygon PoS; BNB Smart Chain; Avalanche C-Chain.
This list is a starting point, not a shortlist. No metrics are recorded here until they are measured and sourced.
Decision gate
The evaluation produces a scored comparison with sources, and a recommendation. The project lead approves the chain before any deployment script targets it. Multi-chain deployment is out of scope for the first release.