Base has delayed its Beryl mainnet upgrade by one day to ensure the B20 Activation Registry is fully operational before the hard fork goes live.
Base announced that Beryl will now activate on mainnet on June 26 at 18:00 UTC instead of the previously scheduled June 25 launch.
Source: basedocs.
The Ethereum layer 2 network attributed the delay to a timing dependency involving the B20 Activation Registry, which must complete its initialization before developers can deploy native B20 tokens.
The network explained that the Activation Registry controls whether B20 feature flags become available after the hard fork. Base added that the registry can take up to one hour to come online after activation, making the additional delay necessary before the upgrade proceeds.
B20 rollout and withdrawal changes
Beryl is Base’s second independent network upgrade after Azul, which reached mainnet in May. The release introduces B20, a protocol level token standard that allows issuers to create stablecoins and real-world asset tokens directly within Base’s node software instead of deploying conventional ERC 20 smart contracts.
Base previously said B20 remains compatible with the ERC 20 specification and supports ERC 2612 permit functionality, allowing existing wallets, exchanges, and indexers to work without modification. The protocol also includes an Issuer Toolkit that offers role-based permissions, mint and burn controls, transfer restrictions, optional supply limits, and freeze and seizure features for regulated issuers.
The hard fork also shortens the standard withdrawal period from Base to Ethereum from seven days to five days for the route used by most bridging providers. Base has previously attributed the reduction to improvements introduced through Azul’s Multiproofs framework, which reduced reliance on the original fault-proof challenge window.
Beryl also integrates Reth V2, which the network said reduces storage requirements for nodes by up to 50% while supporting higher block gas targets.
Outage occurred before planned activation
Base originally scheduled Beryl for June 25, the same day the network experienced a block production outage that lasted for nearly two hours. The engineering team identified a consensus issue after an invalid block entered the sequencing pipeline and temporarily stopped new block creation.
Engineers restored normal block production later that day, while Base confirmed the incident was unrelated to the planned Beryl upgrade.
Blocks are being produced normally, and we have verified widespread recovery in the ecosystem.
Any remaining stuck Base nodes will recover upon restart and syncing.
The team has found the root cause for this halt and we’ll share a full post mortem based on our learnings and…
— Base Build (@buildonbase) June 25, 2026
Base creator Jesse Pollak also stated that user funds remained safe during the outage while acknowledging that network halts were unacceptable for infrastructure intended to support global financial activity.
Base has scheduled its next network upgrade, Cobalt, for September. The company expects that release to introduce native account abstraction, protocol level smart accounts, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, additional B20 capabilities, and a unified node binary that combines consensus and execution clients.
