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Launching a token on Base: the 16,777,216 gas cap we hit on launch day

#ethereum #base #solidity #web3

We launched the ARL token on Base Mainnet on 24 October 2026. The contracts went out as planned. The liquidity step did not, and the reason is worth knowing if you ship on Base.

The setup

Liquidity is opened by two Gnosis Safes (2-of-3). Each Safe runs one Transaction Builder batch through MultiSend: four createAndInitializePoolIfNecessary calls on the Uniswap v3 NonfungiblePositionManager (ARL/USDC, ARL/USDT, ARL/WETH, ARL/cbBTC), one ERC-20 approve and four mint calls for single-sided ARL positions from 0.20 USD.

We rehearsed this on a fork of Base Mainnet. It passed.

What happened

Both batches collected their two signatures. On the execute screen, Safe warned: "This transaction will most likely fail."

eth_call of execTransaction returned success. eth_estimateGas reverted. Binary-searching the gas limit with eth_call showed the batch needs about 21.3M gas: each new Uniswap v3 pool costs roughly 4.9M gas to deploy.

Base enforces a per-transaction gas cap of 16,777,216 (2^24, EIP-7825) since its Azul upgrade. A transaction above it is rejected. Our fork rehearsal ran on Anvil, which does not enforce that cap, so it never showed up.

The fix

We split the Liquidity batch into two Safe transactions with the same calls and amounts:

  1. USDC and USDT pools, approve, two mints: 5.7M gas
  2. WETH and cbBTC pools, two mints: 10.3M gas

Once the pools existed, the Public Launch batch (pool creation calls become no-ops, then approve and four mints) needed only 1.35M gas and ran unchanged. We replayed the three transactions in order on an Anvil fork before collecting new signatures. On chain, the four pools hold 5,000,000 ARL, the same numbers as the rehearsal.

Takeaways

  • Check every planned transaction against the chain's per-transaction gas cap, not only the block gas limit.
  • A fork rehearsal does not enforce EIP-7825 unless you check gas used yourself.
  • A reverting eth_estimateGas next to a succeeding eth_call is a strong hint that you are above a cap.

Addresses and the full runbook are in the repository: https://github.com/armanalabsai/arlcoin.io/blob/main/docs/mainnet-plan.md

ARL token: 0xde91E6f39D50bBd875f831dcc1134A3D7f3aaDb4 (Base Mainnet)

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