Base Founder Jesse Rarely Acknowledges Strategic Mistake Publicly, Social Dream Shattered

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

On July 15, Base founder Jesse Pollak published a lengthy post announcing that he would hand over leadership of the Base App back to Coinbase, while he would devote all his energy to the Base blockchain itself, aiming to build Base into the "global financial blockchain." Jesse will continue to lead the Base chain but will no longer be responsible for the Base App; the Base App will be taken over by Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie in the crypto community.

The most noteworthy aspect of this adjustment is not Jesse's departure from the Base App, but his rare admission of Base's strategic misjudgment over the past two years regarding the social direction.

In the past, Base attempted to position itself as a consumer-grade entry point to the crypto world. From Farcaster to Zora, from creator coins to miniapps, and the Base App, Base hoped to bring more ordinary users on-chain with "on-chain social + creator economy."

But now, Pollak personally admitted: Base bet on the builders right but bet on social wrong. This statement can almost be regarded as the interim verdict on Base's social experiment.

On-chain social did not become the center of the next wave of adoption; what truly emerged were prediction markets, perpetual contracts, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. Users are not unwilling to go on-chain, but they are unwilling to go on-chain just for social interaction itself.

They are more willing to go on-chain for trading, payments, yields, and speculation.

I. What Did Jesse Say?

In the long post, Jesse detailed his reflections and adjustments over the past six months. He frankly stated: "Q1 2026 was a punch in the face." For the past two years, Base had made a dual bet: first, believing that builders would unlock the next wave of crypto adoption; second, believing that adoption would be driven by "new on-chain native social experiences" (creators, content, messaging).

The result was: "We were right about the builder bet, but clearly wrong about the social bet." Builders indeed drove the adoption wave—prediction markets, perpetual contracts, and stablecoins became the strongest growth engines—but social was not at the center. On the contrary, "the entire social side market we've been working hard to build—Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and yes, creator tokens—has completely collapsed."

He bluntly said: "I was wrong. Whether the timing was wrong... or it was completely wrong, only time will tell, but regardless, I'm sure it was wrong." The collateral damage was quite severe: Base fell behind in key areas—perpetual contracts (though with Avantis, etc.), prediction markets (though with Limitless, etc.) lagged behind mature competitors; there was also a lot of room for improvement in unlocking enterprise-grade tokenization and payments. People lost confidence, and CT reminded him of his mistake every week.

Jesse said that this year has been a practice in "eating shit." But the lesson he learned is: when things feel the worst, the best thing to do is to put your head down and build. He has shifted his focus from the App back to the chain, started writing code again, launched features like Azul, Beryl, B20, privacy, ledger, and re-examined assumptions: Does crypto need social to grow? Does Base need an App? Can Base be bigger than Coinbase?

The conclusion shifted to clarity: "Better money is enough—we're seeing this in real time with stablecoins, prediction, perpetuals, tokenization... I am now focused on bringing a billion people on-chain by making global finance actually work." The three specific pillars for 2026 are: winning on trading (all assets, including tokenized stocks, memes, App tokens, etc.), payments (global stablecoins that work for both individuals and businesses), and agents (AI agents accelerate everything, because crypto is computer-native money, and AI will create trillions of new economic participants).

He has returned the Base App to Coinbase, to be led by Cobie, and allowed it to expand beyond the Base ecosystem (something he, as Base's leader, "won't like"). He emphasized that builders are still the cornerstone, and Base will continue to support them through Base Layer, Batches, ecosystem funds, etc.

II. Why Did Base's Social Dream Shatter?

Base's bet on social was not without logic.

Jesse is the soul of Base and the most important shaper of Base's community culture. The explosion of friend.tech on Base a few years ago made the market believe for a while that Jesse and Base might become the main arena for on-chain social and the creator economy. friend.tech proved one thing: when social relationships are financialized, on-chain products can gain enormous attention in an extremely short time.

This also reinforced Base's preference for social, and the rapid fall of friend.tech did not affect Base's judgment.

Farcaster, Zora, creator coins, miniapps, the Base App—behind these layouts was actually a complete vision: if Coinbase provides the compliant entry, Base provides the low-cost on-chain environment, Farcaster provides the social graph, and Zora provides tools for content and creator assetization, then Base would have the opportunity to build a consumer-grade on-chain ecosystem different from traditional DeFi.

But this logic ultimately did not materialize. The problem is that on-chain social too easily turns into on-chain speculation.

The explosion of friend.tech was not essentially because users found a better social experience, but because users discovered that social relationships could be traded. Creator tokens are similar; they turn content, influence, and community relationships into assets, but many times, asset trading is far more important than content consumption.

Once speculative heat declines, social relationships do not naturally remain.

Farcaster faced the cold-start problem of social networks; Zora faced the tension between content consumption and asset issuance; creator coins easily turned into short-cycle attention trades. Base invested significant resources, hoping these products would bring mainstream users, but ultimately, what remained were mostly crypto-native users, airdrop hunters, short-term traders, and creator token players.

This is also why Jesse said the entire social side market "completely collapsed." It wasn't without heat, but it didn't form sustainable adoption.

In contrast, the demand for stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, and tokenized assets is more direct. Users go on-chain not to "own social relationships," but for faster trading, lower-cost payments, higher yields, stronger speculative opportunities, or to access markets not available in traditional finance.

This is a brutal but necessary correction for Base. Social can be part of on-chain applications, but it is difficult to become the center of Base's next stage of growth.

III. The Positive Pressure from Robinhood Chain

If it were just the failure of the social experiment, Base would still have enough time to adjust slowly.

But the sudden outbreak of Robinhood Chain rapidly amplified Base's sense of crisis.

In early July, after the launch of Robinhood Chain, it quickly accumulated trading activity. According to Token Terminal data, Robinhood Chain processed 7.6 million transactions per day 11 days after its mainnet launch, while Base processed 9.2 million transactions during the same period. The gap between the two was far smaller than the market had previously expected.

More importantly, the growth of Robinhood Chain is not pure on-chain speculation. It is tied to Robinhood's tokenized stock platform, offering stock tokenization products in over 120 countries, with about 23 million brokerage users from Robinhood as potential entry points. Data also showed that Robinhood Chain has achieved over $500 million in daily trading volume on Uniswap deployments, second only to the Ethereum mainnet, and once surpassed Base to become the second-largest spot activity deployment on Uniswap.

Of course, the early data of Robinhood Chain has obvious subsidy factors. Robinhood pays gas fees for users for the first 90 days after the mainnet launch, a subsidy expected to last until the end of September 2026. That is to say, whether the current high trading volume can continue after the subsidies end still needs to be observed.

But for Base, the real danger is not whether Robinhood Chain is currently "inflated," but that it represents a new competitive model.

Base's past advantages were Coinbase exchange traffic, US compliance branding, and developer ecosystem; Robinhood Chain has another more direct entry point: stocks, ETFs, options, retail accounts, and tokenized US stocks. It is not competing for traffic among crypto-native users but directly bringing traditional brokerage users into the on-chain financial world.

If Base's past ideal was "to make on-chain social a consumer entry point," Robinhood Chain's answer is simpler and more direct: users are already trading, so put the trading assets on-chain.

This is a frontal pressure on Base.

IV. Base's New Starting Point

Jesse's shift is essentially a repositioning of Base.

In the past, Base's narrative leaned more towards on-chain consumer. It hoped to bring ordinary users on-chain with low costs, strong distribution, and social products. But now, Base's narrative is shifting to on-chain finance: trading, payments, stablecoins, AI agents, settlement layer.

This aligns better with the overall industry trend. Over the past year, the on-chain demands that have truly emerged are almost all related to finance: stablecoin payments, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, RWA, on-chain lending, AI agent payments. Social can bring narratives, but finance brings trading, revenue, fees, and retention.

Base's advantages are still obvious. Backed by Coinbase, it has strong compliance branding, exchange entry points, developer community, stablecoin use cases, and enterprise customer resources. At the same time, Base is not blank in the AI sector. Venice and Virtuals are two of the most representative cards in the Base ecosystem, the former representing the direction of AI applications with privacy and open models, and the latter representing the direction of AI agent assetization and the agent economy.

If what Jesse said—"AI will create trillions of new economic participants"—holds true, then Base's opportunity is not only to accommodate human traders but also to accommodate the wallets, payments, settlements, and trading activities of AI agents.

This is also the most imaginative part of Base's new narrative: stablecoins solve the payment medium for machines and people; prediction markets and perpetual contracts provide trading scenarios; tokenized assets provide tradable targets; AI agents may become new on-chain users. If Base can connect these modules, it would no longer just be Coinbase's Layer2, but could become the main settlement layer for Coinbase's system for the next generation of financial activities.

Base's biggest advantage has always been not just Coinbase itself, but the users, compliance, stablecoins, institutional relationships, and financial infrastructure capabilities behind this entry point. The social experiment can fail, but if Base can re-establish advantages in trading, payments, stablecoins, AI agents, and tokenized assets, it is still one of the most strategically valuable networks among Ethereum Layer2s.

The real problem is that the market will not give Base much more time to tell stories. Robinhood Chain is already rapidly approaching with tokenized stocks and subsidized trading; Stripe is restructuring the merchant-side entry point with stablecoin payments; Solana and Hyperliquid are continuously applying pressure on trading experience and market microstructure.

The rise of Robinhood Chain once again proves that in the competition of Layer 2, no one's position is unbreakable. Base once became the "top brand" with Coinbase's backing, but now faces a frontal impact from challengers that also have strong platform support.