Written by: Eric, Foresight News
At noon Beijing time on July 21st, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak posted on X, stating that Robinhood Chain's launch of tokenized stocks in the EVM environment is the right direction. Base has fallen behind in this area but is working with Coinbase on related products. Base plans to launch tokenized stocks backed 1:1 by actual stocks, rather than Robinhood's derivatives model.
This is Jesse's second public "admission of mistake" recently. On the eve of the Robinhood Chain mainnet launch, Jesse Pollak publicly acknowledged that betting on social and creator tokens for over a year was a strategic misstep. Those experiments around Farcaster, Zora, and content tokens failed to achieve sustainable adoption. The prices of related tokens have significantly declined, and the enthusiasm of early builders has cooled. Pollak subsequently handed over leadership of the Base App back to Coinbase, with Cobie taking over, while he focuses on the chain's core infrastructure.
In the field of public chains launched by exchanges, aside from BNB Chain, Base has reached a level where few can match it. BNB Chain has years of accumulated advantages, a moat that Base cannot breach in the short term. However, when facing other L2s like OP Mainnet and Arbitrum, which also have years of established advantages, Base holds its own, even showing clear dominance in areas including meme tokens.
Perhaps precisely because of Coinbase's influence, Base, despite its strong momentum, lacks staying power. The problems buried during its rapid sprint have been magnified infinitely following the launch of Robinhood Chain.
After taking over the Base App, Cobie admitted that Coinbase is drifting away from crypto-native users, and Base's stagnation in decentralization is typical evidence. Base's centralization issues have long been widely criticized. The two block production interruption events in August 2025 and late June 2026 clearly point to problems with a single sequencer. An even bigger issue is that L2BEAT is preparing to downgrade Base's decentralization rating from Stage 1 back to Stage 0.
L2BEAT's standards do not equate to security. Base has already proven that user assets remain safe even if the Security Council fails. But the main reason this issue has been brought up again recently is: as a crypto-native exchange, how can you compete with Robinhood Chain if you haven't established any advantages in decentralization over such a long period?
Within just over ten days of its mainnet launch, Robinhood Chain's DEX trading volume surged into the top five, with daily transaction counts once surpassing Base's. Before this, Base could afford to "slack off" relying on its own traffic and data. But with a formidable enemy suddenly at the gates, every "minor issue" becomes unacceptable.
Since Robinhood Chain's launch, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has continuously followed the dynamics of new projects. In contrast, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong recently changed his profile picture, which sparked a meme token called BRAIN, causing its market cap to soar to $37 million. However, he quickly changed back to his old picture, leading BRAIN's market cap to plummet to $2 million. The contrast between their actions is striking.
Although Brian Armstrong quickly responded on X to community feedback, stating that his personal account is not an investment signal and he will not endorse specific tokens, the community clearly wasn't buying it. The unofficial Base Chinese community X account changed its name to "Base 太狗了中文社区" (Base is too dog-like Chinese Community) after the incident, and today changed it to "Base 不中叻中文社区" (Base ain't working Chinese Community), dripping with sarcasm.
Of course, we cannot say Base is performing poorly. Base still boasts the highest TVL among L2s, approaching $12 billion, and holds the standard-setting authority in the machine payment field. Armstrong has repeatedly emphasized that Base's goal is to be long-term financial infrastructure, not to chase short-term hype. However, the emergence of Robinhood Chain has indeed accelerated competition and is forcing Base to respond more quickly to user demands for reliability and support.
For Base, the most urgent task now is perhaps not to address these gaps, but to leverage this pressure to genuinely resolve the long-standing technical and trust issues. Wall Street has countless financial firms that can replicate Robinhood Chain's path. Base does not hold a sufficiently large advantage in the RWA tokenization field. If it doesn't seize this opportunity to change, the situation will only become more passive.
