Aerodrome has grown to be enormous, constituting nearly half of Base's TVL. It is by far the most popular app on Base, the largest DEX by many metrics, and often the place where you'll get the best trading experience. Fees are low, and in particular slippage is very low, because of Aerodrome's token model where liquidity is incentivised through bribes and votes. My only criticism is that the full design of this model is hard to understand; it's so complex and took me at least a day to really get it! But it makes so much sense, and as a result it's where you'll find the most liquidity. It's also fantastic for bootstrapping liquidity ahead of time, which makes it very useful for new tokens that have just launched, who want to increase their onchain liquidity. The UI is also very smooth, and the team also provides decentralised mirrors at alternative domains, which is a massive bonus for me. Overall, I'd say it's one of the best DEXs out there, and certainly the best on Base.

Layer3 helped me discover a lot of new apps, and helped guide me along each step of using them. They provide some nice educational resources for each quest, and I really like smooth UI. However, they've become a little more extractive of late - asking you to pay money to mint their 'cubes', collect their intangible rewards, and funnelling you into these arbitrary points systems under the guise of 'gamification'. I'd really rather they stuck to the core mission a little more, because everything around it is quite distracting. Still, I'd highly recommend it to learn about tons of new apps and protocols. Good for beginners.

Metamask has become synonymous with 'browser wallet', in the same way that Zoom became synonymous with 'video call'. Its dominance as the #1 most popular wallet is due to network effects, first mover advantage and clever marketing, combined with having no major red flags. However, it's lacking a lot of features that come with other competitors. It's a bit clunky and hard to use, and it's missing some nice features like security notifications that come with other wallets. Metamask snaps are quite useful - they can add a lot of nice features including support for some exotic blockchains - and there are other plugins like pocket universe that help with security. But overall, it's a very mediocre wallet on its own - and worth exploring others.

Sunflower land is my guilty pleasure. It is utterly addictive, and I keep coming back every day. Essentially, it's very similar to games like Farmville, where you take charge of a farm and start grinding on an endless treadmill of levelling up, expanding, farming more, earning coins, completing quests, etc. But it's really fun, and the underlying game is very enjoyable. It's also incredibly cute, with a great visual style and cute characters. In some parts of its marketing, it has positioned itself as play-to-earn. Personally, I've earned about $10 over the 18 months I've been playing - a completely insignificant amount. But it works as a true play-to-earn game should; your in-game assets do have value, and you can sell them, trade them for others, or buy things to get ahead. I do wish I was less addicted, but that's part of the reason why it's such a good game. I would definitely recommend it!