Base Chain ID (8453): RPC, MetaMask Setup & Explorer

The quick answer most people came for: Base mainnet’s chain ID is 8453, the public RPC is https://mainnet.base.org, and the explorer is basescan.org. Everything else you might need is below.

Base network settings — quick reference

Base Mainnet:

Setting	Value
Network name	Base
Chain ID	8453
RPC URL	https://mainnet.base.org
Currency symbol	ETH
Block explorer	https://basescan.org

Base Sepolia (testnet):

Setting	Value
Network name	Base Sepolia
Chain ID	84532
RPC URL	https://sepolia.base.org
Currency symbol	ETH
Block explorer	https://sepolia.basescan.org

A mnemonic that sticks: 8453 spells “BASE” on a phone keypad. The testnet just appends a 2.

What a chain ID actually does

The chain ID is the number that keeps EVM networks from colliding. Every transaction you sign embeds it (EIP-155), which is what stops a transaction signed for one chain from being replayed on another — without it, a signature spending your ETH on a testnet could be rebroadcast to spend real ETH on mainnet. When your wallet and a dapp disagree about the chain ID, the connection fails safely instead of sending funds to the wrong ledger.

Practical consequences:

• Wallets identify networks by chain ID, not name. Anyone can label a network “Base” — the ID 8453 is the actual identity. That’s why verifying the ID matters more than the display name when adding networks.
• One address, many ledgers. Your address exists on every EVM chain simultaneously; the chain ID determines which balance sheet a transaction touches.
• Dapps request switches by ID. When ape.store or a DEX prompts “switch to Base,” your wallet matches 8453 against its network list — which is why the network must be added before the dapp can use it.

Base vs other common chain IDs

For orientation when juggling networks:

Network	Chain ID
Ethereum mainnet	1
OP Mainnet	10
BNB Chain	56
Polygon	137
Base	8453
Arbitrum One	42161
Base Sepolia (testnet)	84532

If a “Base” network prompt shows any ID from the rest of this table — or one that isn’t listed anywhere official — decline it.

How to add Base to MetaMask

Recent MetaMask versions ship with Base built in — check your network picker first. If it’s missing:

The easy way: visit basescan.org, scroll to the footer, and click “Add Base Network” — it fills every field for you. Chainlist.org does the same.

The manual way:

1. Open MetaMask → network picker (top left) → Add network → Add a network manually
2. Enter the mainnet values from the table above, exactly as written
3. Save, then switch to Base in the picker

Your address stays identical across every EVM chain — adding Base doesn’t create a new account, it just lets your wallet see the Base side of it.

Common gotchas

• Sent funds “to the wrong chain.” ETH sent to your address on Ethereum mainnet won’t show on Base — same address, different ledger. The funds aren’t lost; they’re on the chain you sent them to, and bridging moves them.
• RPC rate limits. The free public RPC throttles under heavy use (bots, dev work). If MetaMask acts flaky at busy times, switch the RPC field to a free-tier endpoint from Alchemy or QuickNode — same chain ID, sturdier pipe.
• Fake “Base token” prompts. Adding Base sometimes surfaces scam token suggestions. Base has no native token; gas is ETH, full stop. More on how Base works here.
• Wrong chain ID = wallet warnings. If a dapp prompts you to add “Base” with any chain ID other than 8453, close the tab — mismatched chain IDs are a classic phishing pattern.

Checklist: verifying you’re really on Base

Before signing anything meaningful on a “Base” network you just added:

1. Network shows chain ID 8453 in your wallet’s network details
2. Currency symbol shows ETH, not a token you’ve never heard of
3. A test address lookup on basescan.org matches what your wallet shows
4. The network was added via basescan/chainlist or typed manually — not from a random site’s popup
5. A tiny test transaction confirms in seconds and appears on Basescan

Thirty seconds of checking, and every phishing variant of “fake Base network” fails at least one step.

For developers

The 30-second version: Base is a standard OP Stack chain, so tooling is vanilla EVM. Point your framework at https://mainnet.base.org (or a provider endpoint), chain ID 8453, and everything from Foundry to viem behaves exactly as on any Ethereum network. Contract verification runs through the Basescan API. Test on Base Sepolia (84532) with faucet ETH before deploying anything real.

What people actually do once connected

Once your wallet speaks Base, the interesting parts start: getting ETH onto the chain, trading the meme coin economy, or launching a token of your own — which on a launchpad like ape.store takes about as long as adding the network did.