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Base has postponed its Beryl upgrade by 24 hours, rescheduling mainnet activation to June 26 at 18:00 UTC after engineers determined the B20 Activation Registry needed additional time to initialise before the hard fork could safely proceed.
Base has postponed its highly anticipated Beryl upgrade by 24 hours, opting to delay the mainnet activation until June 26 at 18:00 UTC to ensure critical infrastructure is fully operational before the hard fork goes live.
The Ethereum Layer 2 network said the decision was driven by the need to complete the initialization of the B20 Activation Registry, a core component that must be active before developers can begin deploying native B20 tokens. While the postponement is relatively short, it reflects the growing emphasis on network stability as blockchain platforms continue to expand into tokenized finance and regulated digital assets.
“The Activation Registry can take up to one hour to initialize after activation, making the additional delay necessary before the upgrade proceeds,” Base explained in its official documentation.
Originally scheduled to activate on June 25, the Beryl upgrade will now go live on June 26 after Base engineers determined that the B20 Activation Registry required additional time to become fully operational.
According to Base, the registry governs when B20 feature flags become available following the hard fork. Until that process is complete, developers cannot deploy native B20 assets safely across the network.
Rather than risk launching the upgrade before the registry was fully synchronized, the network chose to postpone activation by one day—a move many infrastructure developers consider prudent for maintaining network reliability.
The decision highlights the increasingly complex coordination required for Layer 2 upgrades, where multiple protocol components must activate in a precise sequence to avoid unintended disruptions.
The Beryl upgrade delivers several major protocol enhancements designed to improve both user experience and institutional adoption.
Its headline feature is the introduction of the native B20 token standard. Unlike conventional ERC-20 tokens that rely entirely on smart contracts, B20 enables issuers to create stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets directly within Base’s node software at the protocol level.
Despite this architectural shift, Base has confirmed that B20 maintains compatibility with the widely used ERC-20 specification. Existing wallets, exchanges, and blockchain indexers will continue operating without requiring modifications.
The protocol also supports ERC-2612 permit functionality, enabling gas-efficient approvals while simplifying token interactions.
To support regulated financial institutions, Base has introduced an Issuer Toolkit featuring:
These compliance-focused features are expected to make Base increasingly attractive for enterprises exploring tokenized assets and regulated stablecoins.
Another notable enhancement included in the Beryl upgrade is a reduction in the standard withdrawal period from Base to Ethereum.
The withdrawal window falls from seven days to five days for the route used by most bridge providers. Base previously credited this improvement to Azul’s Multiproofs framework, which reduced dependence on the original fraud-proof challenge period.
Node operators will also benefit from the integration of Reth V2.
According to Base, Reth V2 can reduce node storage requirements by as much as 50% while supporting significantly higher block gas targets, allowing the network to process larger workloads more efficiently.
The announcement comes just one day after Base experienced an unexpected network interruption that temporarily halted block production for nearly two hours.
The outage occurred on June 25—the original activation date for the Beryl upgrade—prompting some community members to speculate whether the two events were connected.
Base quickly clarified that the outage stemmed from an unrelated consensus issue.
Engineers said an invalid block entered the sequencing pipeline, causing new block production to stop until the issue was identified and resolved. Normal network operations resumed later that day.
Base emphasized that the incident had no connection to the planned hard fork.
Base creator Jesse Pollak also addressed the outage publicly, reassuring users that customer funds remained secure throughout the disruption.
“User funds remained safe,” Pollak said, while acknowledging that prolonged network interruptions are unacceptable for infrastructure intended to support global financial systems.
The transparency surrounding the incident has been viewed positively by many observers, particularly as Layer 2 networks compete on reliability alongside scalability.
While attention remains focused on the imminent Beryl upgrade, Base has already outlined its next major development milestone.
The network’s upcoming Cobalt upgrade, currently scheduled for September, is expected to introduce several advanced capabilities aimed at improving usability and developer experience.
Among the planned features are native account abstraction, protocol-level smart accounts, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, expanded B20 functionality, and a unified node binary that merges consensus and execution clients into a single software package.
Together, these enhancements reflect Base’s broader strategy of simplifying blockchain infrastructure while expanding support for institutional-grade financial applications.
For developers, enterprises, and users alike, the successful deployment of the Beryl upgrade marks another important step in Base’s evolution as it continues building a faster, more scalable Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem capable of supporting the next generation of digital assets.
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