You may have seen Base described as a "Stage 1" rollup, or read that it has an "independent Security Council." Both phrases come from a specific framework that researchers use to grade how much a layer 2 network still depends on trusted operators versus how much is enforced purely by code. This guide explains what that framework measures, what Base's Security Council actually does, and what the milestone does and does not change for someone who just wants to hold or swap tokens on Base.
Why rollups need a grading system at all
Base, like other optimistic rollups, processes transactions off of Ethereum and then posts data back to Ethereum so the network's history can be verified. Our guide to how Base stays secure covers that relationship in detail. In theory, this design lets anyone challenge an incorrect result. In practice, a new rollup usually launches with that verification power still concentrated in its own team, simply because permissionless verification takes time to build and test.
The research group L2Beat built a public framework called Stages to describe how far a given rollup has moved away from that early, centralized setup. It uses three levels.
- Stage 0, "full training wheels." The operator's own software is the practical source of truth. Independent verification tools may exist, but they do not have real authority to stop or reverse what the operator does.
- Stage 1, "limited training wheels." A functioning proof system is live, meaning outside parties can genuinely dispute an incorrect state. A Security Council still exists as a backstop for emergencies and contract upgrades, but its power is bounded, for example requiring a high supermajority to act rather than a single party's signature.
- Stage 2, "no training wheels." The system runs entirely on code, and even the Security Council's emergency powers are narrowed to a very specific, pre agreed set of situations, such as a confirmed bug in the proof system itself.
Where Base sits today
Base reached Stage 1 in 2026, after two separate pieces of work landed. The first was permissionless fault proofs, which went live on Base mainnet in late 2024 and let any participant, not just Base's own infrastructure, propose or challenge a claim about the network's state. The second was the introduction of an independent Security Council, added in 2025, which took sole authority over contract upgrades away from a smaller, Base controlled key set. Reaching Stage 1 put Base among roughly the first ten rollups, out of the dozens L2Beat tracks, to clear that bar, a real software milestone rather than a symbolic label.
What the Security Council actually does
The Security Council is not a customer support team and it does not touch individual wallets, balances, or transactions. Its authority is narrow and specific: it can approve upgrades to Base's core contracts, and, in a genuine emergency such as a critical bug being exploited in real time, it can pause the affected system to limit damage.
What makes it meaningfully different from a single company holding an admin key is how it is structured. Council membership is spread across multiple independent organizations and individuals, based in different jurisdictions, and acting requires a high supermajority of members to agree, commonly cited as a 75 percent threshold. No single member, including Base's own team, can unilaterally push through a change. If you have read our guide to multisig wallets, the idea is similar: spreading the ability to act across many independent parties so that one compromised or malicious party cannot move funds or change rules alone. The Security Council applies that same logic to the protocol's contracts.
What fault proofs add on top of that
A Security Council is a backstop for edge cases. The day to day integrity of Base rests on fault proofs. Because they are permissionless, any outside party, a researcher, a competing rollup team, an independent node operator, can run challenger software that checks Base's posted results against the actual transaction data on Ethereum. If a result were ever wrong, a challenge could be submitted and resolved by Ethereum itself acting as the referee, without needing Base's cooperation. That is the practical meaning of "trust minimized." You are not required to trust that Base's team is honest, only that the open, incentivized challenge process would catch and correct a bad result.
What this does and does not change for you
If you hold funds in a self custody wallet on Base, Stage 1 status does not change how you use it. Your wallet, addresses, and the mechanics of how a token swap works are exactly the same as before this milestone. What it does change is the underlying risk profile of the network you are transacting on. A network still at Stage 0 asks you to trust that its operator will behave correctly and honestly, with limited outside recourse if they do not. A Stage 1 network like Base has already shifted a meaningful share of that trust onto open software and a broad, multi party council rather than a single company.
It is also worth being precise about what Stage 1 is not. It is not a guarantee that Base, or any smart contract deployed on it, is free of bugs. It is not a claim about the safety of a specific token or application built on top of the network, which is a separate question covered in our guide to researching a token before you swap it. And it is not the finish line. Stage 2, where even the Security Council's emergency powers shrink to a narrowly defined bug response, remains the stated long term goal for Base and for the broader rollup ecosystem.
The short version
L2Beat's Stages framework measures how much a rollup still depends on trusted parties versus open, verifiable code. Base reached Stage 1 in 2026 by combining permissionless fault proofs, which let anyone challenge an incorrect result, with an independent, multi party Security Council that requires broad consensus to touch core contracts. Neither piece changes how you use your wallet, but together they describe a network that has moved a real step away from operator trust and toward trust minimized, code enforced security.
Sources: Security Council for Base, Base Documentation, Base has reached Stage 1 Decentralization, Base blog, Base reaches 'stage 1' in Ethereum rollup decentralization, The Block, Base becomes 10th L2 network to reach at least Stage 1 decentralization, CryptoSlate, The Stages Framework, L2BEAT, Fault proofs are now live on Base Mainnet, Base blog