Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

On July 15, Base founder Jesse Pollak published a lengthy article announcing that he would return leadership of the Base App to Coinbase, while he would devote all his energy to the Base blockchain itself, with the goal of turning Base into a "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, known in the crypto community as Cobie.

The most noteworthy aspect of this adjustment is not Jesse's departure from the Base App, but rather his rare admission that Base made a strategic misstep in the social direction over the past two years.

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

However, Pollak now admits: Base bet correctly on builders but made the wrong bet on social. This statement can almost be viewed as a phase judgment on Base's social experiment.

On-chain social did not become 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 do not want to go on-chain for social reasons alone.

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

1. What did Jesse say?

In the lengthy article, Jesse reviewed the reflections and adjustments made over the past six months in detail. He candidly stated: "The first quarter of 2026 is a hard hit." Over the past two years, Base made dual-track bets: one believing that builders would unlock the next wave of crypto adoption; the other believing that adoption would be driven by a "new on-chain native social experience" (creators, content, messaging).

The result is: "Our bet on builders was correct, but our bet on social was clearly wrong." Builders did indeed drive the wave of adoption—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 have been striving to build—Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and yes, creator tokens—completely collapsed."

He frankly stated: "I was wrong. Whether it was the timing or completely wrong, only time will tell, but in any case, I am certain I was wrong." The collateral damage was quite severe: Base lagged in critical areas—perpetual contracts (despite Avantis and others), prediction markets (despite Limitless and others) fell behind mature competitors; there is also significant room for improvement in enterprise-level tokenization and payment unlocking. People lost confidence, and CT reminds him of his mistakes every week.

Jesse stated that this year has been a "shitty" exercise. But the lesson he learned is that when things feel the worst, the best approach is to lower your head and build. He has refocused his attention from the App back to the chain, restarting coding, and rolling out functionalities such as Azul, Beryl, B20, privacy, and ledger, and revisiting assumptions: Does crypto need social to grow? Does Base need an App? Can Base be bigger than Coinbase?

The conclusion became clear: "Better money is enough—we are seeing this in real time through stablecoins, predictions, perpetuals, and tokenization... I am now focused on bringing one billion people on-chain by making global finance really work." The specific three pillars in 2026:Winning trades (all assets, including tokenized stocks, memes, App coins, etc.), payments (global stablecoins effective for individuals and businesses), and agents (AI agents accelerating everything, as crypto is computer-native money, and AI will create trillions of new economic participants).

He has handed the Base App back to Coinbase, now led by Cobie, and allows it to expand beyond the Base ecosystem (which he, as Base leader, "won't like"). He emphasized that builders remain the cornerstone, and Base will continue to support them through Base Layer, Batches, ecological funds, and more.

2. Why Did Base's Social Dream Fail?

Base's bet on social was not illogical.

Jesse is the soul of Base and one of the most important shapers of Base's community culture. The early success of friend.tech on Base led the market to believe at one point that Jesse and Base might become the main stage for on-chain social and creator economy. friend.tech proved one thing: when social relationships are financialized, on-chain products can gain immense attention in a very short time.

This also reinforced Base's preference for social; the rapid decline of friend.tech did not affect Base's judgment.

Farcaster, Zora, creator coins, miniapps, Base App—these strategic deployments are backed by a complete imagination: if Coinbase provides a compliant entrance, Base provides a low-cost on-chain environment, Farcaster provides a social graph, and Zora provides content and creator assetization tools, then Base has the opportunity to create a consumer-grade on-chain ecosystem different from traditional DeFi.

However, this logic ultimately did not pan out. The problem lies in the fact that on-chain social can too easily turn into on-chain speculation.

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

Once the speculation heat diminishes, social relationships will not naturally remain.

Farcaster faces a cold start problem for social networks, Zora deals with the tension between content consumption and asset issuance, while creator coins can easily turn into short-cycle attention trades. Base invested significant resources, hoping these products could attract mainstream users, but ultimately, what remained were more crypto-native users, airdrop hunters, short-term traders, and creator token players.

This is why Jesse claimed that the entire social side market "completely collapsed." It wasn't devoid of popularity, but rather failed to form sustainable adoption.

In contrast, the demand for stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, and tokenized assets is much more direct. Users go on-chain not to "own social relationships," but to trade faster, pay at lower costs, achieve higher yields, find stronger speculation opportunities, or enter markets that traditional finance cannot offer.

This has been a brutal but necessary correction for Base. Social can be a part of on-chain applications, but it is challenging to become the central focus of Base's next phase of growth.

3. Positive Pressure from Robinhood Chain

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

However, the sudden emergence of Robinhood Chain has rapidly magnified Base's sense of crisis.

In early July, after the launch of Robinhood Chain, it quickly accumulated trading activity. According to Token Terminal data, just 11 days after the mainnet launch, Robinhood Chain processed 7.6 million trades in a single day, while Base handled 9.2 million trades during the same period, with the gap far smaller than the market had previously expected.

More importantly, the growth of Robinhood Chain is not merely superficial on-chain activity. It is tied to Robinhood's tokenized stock platform, launching stock tokenization products in over 120 countries and equipped with approximately 23 million brokerage customers as potential entry points. Data also shows that Robinhood Chain has achieved over $500 million in daily trading volume deployed in Uniswap, second only to the Ethereum mainnet, and at one point exceeded Base to become the second largest deployment in Uniswap's spot activity.

Of course, the early data of Robinhood Chain has obvious subsidy factors. Robinhood has been paying Gas fees for users for 90 days before the mainnet launch, and this subsidy is expected to last until the end of September 2026. That means whether the current high trading volume can continue after the subsidies end remains to be seen.

But for Base, the real danger lies not in whether Robinhood Chain is currently "puffed up," but rather that it represents a new competitive model.

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

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

This poses positive pressure on Base.

4. A New Starting Point for Base

Jesse's shift essentially repositions Base.

In the past, Base's narrative leaned more toward 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 toward on-chain finance: trading, payments, stablecoins, AI agents, and settlement layers.

This aligns more closely with the overall industry trend. In the past year, the on-chain demand that has truly emerged has almost all been related to finance: stablecoin payments, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, RWA, on-chain lending, and AI agent payments. Social can bring narratives, but finance brings trading, income, expenses, and retention.

Base's advantages remain significant. It is backed by Coinbase, with a strong compliant brand, exchange entry points, developer communities, stablecoin scenarios, and enterprise customer resources. Meanwhile, Base is also not blank in the AI race. Venice and Virtuals are the two most representative cards in the Base ecosystem, with the former representing AI applications and privacy, and the latter representing AI agent assetization and the agency economy.

If what Jesse said about "AI creating trillions of new economic participants" holds true, then Base's opportunity lies not only in accommodating human traders but also in accommodating AI agents' wallets, payments, settlements, and trading activities.

This is also the most imaginative part of Base's new narrative: stablecoins solve the payment medium between machines and humans; prediction markets and perpetual contracts provide trading scenarios; tokenized assets offer tradable targets; AI agents could become new on-chain users. If Base can connect these modules, it will no longer be just Coinbase's Layer 2 but may become the main settlement layer for the next generation of financial activities in the Coinbase system.

Base's greatest advantage has never been just the users, compliance, stablecoins, institutional relationships, and financial infrastructure capabilities behind the Coinbase entrance. Social experiments can fail, but if Base can re-establish advantages in trading, payments, stablecoins, AI agents, and tokenized assets, it will still be one of the strategically valuable networks in the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem.

The real issue is that the market will not give Base much time to tell its story anymore. Robinhood Chain has quickly approached with tokenized stocks and subsidized trading, Stripe is reconstructing merchant-side entry with stablecoin payments, and Solana and Hyperliquid continue to put pressure on trading experiences and market microstructures.

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 player" with Coinbase's endorsement, but now faces a direct impact from challengers that also have strong platform support.

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