Base's Beryl upgrade introduced B20, a token standard that lives inside the blockchain node itself rather than as a smart contract, offering built-in compliance features that issuers previously had to code from scratch. Since June 25, 2026, teams launching tokens on Base can now call a single factory function to create a fully ERC-20 compatible token with roles, transfer policies, freeze-and-seize capabilities, and supply controls already included.

What Makes B20 Different From Standard ERC-20 Tokens?

An ERC-20 token is a smart contract that developers write and deploy on top of a blockchain. A B20 token, by contrast, is a precompiled contract written in Rust that runs directly inside the Base node itself. Instead of deploying bytecode, teams simply call the B20 factory precompile, pass a few parameters like name and symbol, and the token exists. The key difference is performance and built-in features. Because B20 runs as a precompile rather than through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the node can execute transfers roughly 50% cheaper and handle approximately twice the transaction throughput compared to standard ERC-20 contracts, with Base targeting these improvements in its next upgrade, Cobalt, scheduled for September 2026.

From a compatibility standpoint, B20 tokens expose the full ERC-20 selector set, meaning everything downstream sees them as normal tokens. MetaMask, Etherscan, The Graph, Coinbase, and decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregators all recognize B20 tokens without any integration changes. Subgraphs written against the ERC-20 application binary interface (ABI) index B20 Transfer events without modification. This backward compatibility means teams don't need to migrate existing infrastructure to accept B20 tokens; they only need to update integrations if they want to use extra features like memos or payment-tag data.

Why Did Base Build Its Own Token Standard?

Base has been the busiest Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) by daily transactions since 2024, with volume increasingly coming from three types of issuers: stablecoin operators, real-world asset (RWA) and equity tokenizers, and long-tail token creators launching everything from memecoins to gaming currencies. All three groups kept rebuilding the same compliance features into their contracts. Each rebuild cost time, introduced audit risk, and sometimes drifted from previous implementations. Regulated issuers were writing the same compliance primitives every time, occasionally with subtle errors.

Beryl's answer was to move these primitives into the chain itself. The B20 specification puts roles, transfer policies, and supply controls behind a stable interface that Base and Spearbit audited once, so issuers don't need to audit them again. Because B20 runs as a precompile rather than through the EVM, the node can do things a contract cannot, with features scheduled for future upgrades including the ability to pay gas fees in your own B20 token and native RPC indexing without requiring a third-party indexer.

What Compliance Features Come Built Into B20?

B20 ships with an Issuer Toolkit containing features that stablecoin and RWA teams currently rebuild as bespoke smart-contract code. These built-in capabilities include:

• Role-based access control: Grant specific addresses permissions to mint, burn, pause transfers, or manage the token without writing custom role logic.
• Transfer policies and blocklists: Enforce allowlists, blocklists, and freeze-and-seize capabilities for regulatory compliance and emergency interventions.
• Supply caps and granular pausing: Set immutable or mutable supply limits and pause transfers at the token level without contract upgrades.
• ERC-2612 permit support: Enable gasless approvals through cryptographic signatures, reducing friction for users and integrations.
• Memos and metadata: Attach payment tags and issuer-defined key-value stores on-chain for legal identifiers, whitepaper hashes, or reserve attestations.

B20 comes in two variants tailored to different issuer profiles. Asset is the general-purpose variant with configurable decimals between 6 and 18, a WAD-precision rebase multiplier for yield-bearing assets, on-chain announcements for sensitive operations, batch minting to multiple recipients, and extra metadata storage. Stablecoin is the focused variant for fiat-backed assets, with decimals hard-wired to 6 (the industry standard for USDC-style stablecoins) and an ISO-style currency code field like "USD" or "EUR" that is set once at creation and never changes.

How Does B20 Fit Into the Broader RWA Tokenization Landscape?

Real-world asset tokenization crossed $30 billion in distributed on-chain value in July 2026, with six pure tokenization platforms accounting for over half of that value. These platforms serve different issuer profiles and compliance models. Securitize, the category leader with $4.39 billion in total value locked (TVL), operates as an SEC-registered transfer agent, broker-dealer, investment adviser, and fund administrator simultaneously, using its proprietary DS Protocol for on-chain compliance. Ondo Finance leads the tokenized-treasury vertical with $3.62 billion in TVL, offering products like USDY (a Treasury-backed note) and OUSG (US qualified purchaser treasuries), using either blocklist or KYC registry compliance depending on the product.

B20 addresses a specific pain point in this ecosystem: the redundant engineering work required to build compliance-grade tokens. While platforms like Securitize and Ondo Finance provide full-stack solutions including regulatory infrastructure, B20 allows teams building on Base to skip the compliance-feature coding layer entirely. This is particularly relevant for teams launching on Base, which hosts significant RWA activity, as the platform reduces time-to-market and audit risk for issuers who might otherwise need to hire specialized smart-contract developers or integrate with larger platforms.

How to Deploy a B20 Token on Base

Teams looking to launch a B20 token on Base follow a straightforward process:

• Choose a variant: Decide whether your token is an Asset (general-purpose with configurable decimals) or a Stablecoin (fiat-backed with fixed 6 decimals and currency code).
• Call the factory precompile: Invoke createB20 with parameters including variant type, a caller-chosen salt for deterministic addressing, ABI-encoded name and symbol, and optional configuration calls to grant roles or set supply caps atomically at creation.
• Verify activation status: Check the Activation Registry to confirm B20 features are live on the network before broadcasting your transaction, as deployment will revert with FeatureNotActivated if the feature is not yet enabled.
• Predict your token address: Use getB20Address to calculate your token's address before deployment, which matters for issuers who need to publish a token address before the transaction is confirmed.

The B20 factory precompile lives at a fixed, network-wide address (0xB20f000000000000000000000000000000000000) on Base mainnet, Base Sepolia, Vibenet, and local base-anvil. Token addresses are deterministic and encode the variant directly, with tokens created by the factory starting with 0xB200 and the factory itself at 0xB20f. This deterministic addressing allows teams to publish token addresses before deployment, a critical feature for coordinated launches and institutional integrations.

The introduction of B20 represents a shift in how blockchain infrastructure handles compliance at the protocol level rather than the application level. By moving token standards into the node itself, Base is reducing the engineering burden on issuers and lowering the barrier to entry for teams launching regulated assets on-chain. As the RWA tokenization market continues to grow, this approach could influence how other Layer 2 networks and blockchains handle token creation and compliance in the future.

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