On June 26, Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase, announced a delay for the mainnet activation of its B20 token standard’s registry following a major technical issue on the network.
With the recent network stability issues, we’re pushing back the B20 Activation Registry mainnet enablement to ensure a smooth rollout. Sepolia and Vibenet remain on track.
We’ll share a revised date shortly.
— Base Build (@buildonbase) June 26, 2026
The announcement came just after a day and approximately a 2-hour mainnet outage on June 25, which halted block production due to an invalid block causing a consensus failure. While the Beryl hard fork itself successfully activated as scheduled around 18:00 UTC on June 26, the team decided to delay the critical Activation Registry step to avoid any risk during token deployments.
The registry is a major part of Beryl’s architecture, controlling when the B20 standard’s feature flags become available, and developers must wait for it to come fully online before they can deploy B20 tokens. This process can take up to 1 hour after the hard fork activates. The B20 standard is designed for stablecoin and real-world asset issuers, which offers built-in compliance tools and operates as Rust precompiles within Base’s node software.
What is the B20 Activation Registry on Base?
The Activation Registry is a protocol-based precompile that acts as a feature flag, controlling when specific B20 token variants become available for deployment on the network. After the Beryl hard fork activates, the registry can take up to approximately 1 hour to fully enable. Developers must verify that it is active before attempting to create B20 tokens; otherwise, deployments revert with a “FeatureNotActivated” error.
This extra step ensures that the new native token functionality is fully operational before issuers begin using it.
What is the Beryl Upgrade?
Beryl is the major upgrade on the Base blockchain network. The upgrade is expected to introduce 3 major improvements to the network.
The B20 Native Token Standard is expected to introduce a high-performance token standard developed directly into the node software as Rust precompiles, not as smart contracts. It is fully compatible with ERC-20 but adds powerful compliance tools such as role-based control, transfer policies, pausing, supply caps, memos, and ERC-2612 permits.
It cuts down the standard single-proof withdrawal window from Ethereum L2 back to L1 from 7 days to 5 days, improving capital efficiency for bridges and users.
Reth V2 upgrades the execution client for approximately 50% lower usage and higher throughput, which helps scale further.
Beryl is expected to be the base as a leading blockchain for issuing stablecoins, real-world assets, and other compliant assets.
“B20 is the Base ecosystem’s own version of ERC-20. It ships with a built-in compliance toolkit: transfer policies, freeze-and-seize, role-based access control, memos, and supply caps. The full interface specs are available in the Base Standard Library repository,” stated on the official page.
The registry will control when developers can start deploying B20 tokens, and it will open the doors for developers and issuers to access the full potential of Beryl.
Reasons Behind the Decision and Yesterday’s Mainnet Stall
On June 25, Base suffered a major chain stall, which started at block 47,806,542. A consensus bug in the single-operator sequencer has created an invalid block to enter the pipeline. This has halted all new block production and created a 2-hour outage, which has affected transactions, deposits, and withdrawals.
The network recovered after manual intervention and node restarts, and no funds were lost due to Ethereum L1’s security guarantees. The team identified the root cause and committed to a full post-mortem.
The blog post stated that, “The team has found the root cause for this halt and is verifying a fix to ensure it cannot recur. We’ll share a full post-mortem, including RCA, with the ecosystem based on our learnings and fixes as a top priority. We’ll continue to monitor all systems to ensure overall network health and stability persists.”
