Base Activates Denim Upgrade, Cutting Block Time to 200 Milliseconds

Base activated its Denim upgrade on mainnet Thursday, Nov. 5, reducing the interval between blocks from two seconds to 200 milliseconds. The network now produces five canonical blocks per second, with each block becoming part of the chain’s accepted record.

Before Denim, Flashblocks provided interim transaction previews between completed blocks. Those previews could differ from the transactions ultimately recorded. The upgrade removes that interim step, and standard RPC interfaces now provide updates at the faster cadence, reducing the need for separate Flashblocks feeds and application logic to reconcile previews with completed blocks.

Denim also adds BaseTime, which lets smart contracts measure elapsed time in milliseconds. That can support uses such as trading, auctions and order expirations. Lending protocols and decentralized exchanges also have more frequent opportunities to respond to market changes, including liquidations and rebalancing.

For B20 tokens, Base’s token standard, the upgrade adds a NOT operator for compliance rules. Denim extends transfer-executor rules to every way a B20 token can be transferred, including transfers made directly by holders. The upgrade also blocks transfers, mints and seizures to a token contract’s own address.

Applications that use a fixed number of blocks as a timer will reach their target 10 times faster under the new cadence. Base’s block.timestamp field remains measured in seconds. TokenPost previously outlined the developer changes apps may need to make for Denim.