How Base can capture the true moat of cryptocurrency in the agency business track.

Written by: @Jun__Yoo

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

On July 15, Base founder Jesse Pollak released a lengthy article that sparked widespread discussion in the industry. Against the backdrop of Robinhood Chain rapidly rising through meme coin activities and Base facing pressure on "what the next story should be," Jesse admitted to previous strategic failures and announced a shift back to focusing on the chain itself.

This post not only sparked a debate about the future of the Base App but also led to various interpretations of topics such as $JESSE. The three points that deserve attention are: his courage to publicly admit mistakes, the next phase of Base's strategy, and the core element of that strategy, "Agents."

Admitting mistakes is the starting point for change

The most impressive part of the post is Jesse's opening statement: "I was wrong, and I am sorry," followed by an explanation of the new strategy.

The cryptocurrency market often rewards unwavering beliefs and aggressive stances, and in such an environment, publicly admitting to judgment errors is not easy, especially when one leads a large ecosystem involving many builders, investors, and users.

The on-chain native social strategy he had strongly advocated earlier was not without reason at the time. The influence of social media continued to grow, and crypto products like Fomo and Polymarket achieved growth through social distribution and viral marketing. In this context, the assumption that "on-chain native social experiences can expand crypto adoption" had its rationale.

The reasons for failure can be deeply analyzed from multiple dimensions, including product, distribution, timing, and user demand, but the key is that he did not conceal the failure. He acknowledged that the on-chain social and creator coin strategy heavily promoted for 2024-2025 did not lead to the expected adoption.

This does not mean the concept of on-chain social is entirely terminated. It may resurface through different product forms and distribution methods and undergo reevaluation. (From this perspective, I am also looking forward to the next steps after Cobie takes over the Base App.)

Jesse stated that the leadership of Base App will return to Coinbase, and he will focus on the chain's infrastructure. Not only did he admit to judgment errors, but he also reassigned roles and clearly defined the next priorities. As the leader of a large protocol, making such a public statement risks damaging his reputation, which is noteworthy.

He concluded by writing: "The experiences I’ve built in this field over the past decade have taught me that when things seem the worst, the best practice is to dig in and continue building."

Base is already on the front line of the next battle

Jesse clearly places the focus of Base on Trading, Payments, and Agents. This article focuses on Agents, particularly agent payments and commerce.

In his words, Trading encompasses all assets from tokenized stocks to meme coins and application coins; Payments refer to stablecoins usable globally by individuals and businesses; while Agents represent a cross-layer between trading and payments that can accelerate the development of both. He does not see Agents as a third independent track equal to the others but believes that crypto is computer-native currency and that artificial intelligence will create trillions of new economic participants.

At least in the realm of on-chain agent payments and agent-native ecosystems, Base currently ranks among the leading networks.

The Coinbase developer platform team released the x402 protocol in May 2025. Following that, Coinbase laid the foundation in partnership with Cloudflare. On July 14, 2026, protocol contributions were completed, and the x402 foundation officially began operations under the Linux Foundation with 40 members. It is no longer tied to any specific company or chain. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the early deployments and payment activities took shape on Base, with many x402 implementations built here, which is hard to deny.

Projects like Virtuals Protocol and Bankr, which first grew on Base before expanding to multi-chain, should also be viewed in the same context.

This indicates that Base holds an early lead in agent ecosystems and builder density. Agents, builders, and the capital that will drive future transactions are gathering in the same place, which is an important leading indicator.

Jesse's builder-led growth strategy is also worth noting. Through Base Batches, Base provides funding and investment opportunities for early teams. In 2026, it connected the robotics track operated by Virtuals with Network School's demo day.

Hackathons and funding programs do not always produce sustainable products. Developer support measures input rather than direct output.

However, in the early stages of platform competition, where builders congregate and which chain is treated as the default deployment space remains important. Reducing experimental costs before the market solidifies can increase the chances of the next meta-killer app emerging from that ecosystem. Base's efforts are meaningful in this regard.

Overall, Base holds a high early market share in the field of on-chain agent payments and continues to attract developers and agent projects. Jesse has decided to allocate more resources in this direction, clearly stating that they will continue to support builders through Base Layer, Base Batches, Base Ecosystem Fund, and the distribution channels of Coinbase and Base App.

The direction is clear: Base will refocus resources on trading, payments, and agents. This is a signal—Base will concentrate its efforts on what it does best.

However, announcing a direction and actually building a moat are two different things. To convert the current early lead into long-term value capture, I believe Base needs to at least address the following three questions from the perspective of the agent ecosystem.

Three questions for Jesse

Q1. What stage of agency business is Base targeting?

The first question is how Base defines agency commerce. Base's strategy and ecosystem support methods will fundamentally differ depending on whether the goal is simple assistance and delegation or fully autonomous trading.

Consider two scenarios: if the short-term goal is delegated commerce (T2), collaborating or integrating with mainstream business platforms like Shopify or existing business standards like Google UCP would have a greater impact. If the goal is fully autonomous, agent-native commerce (T3), then it requires significant support for headless merchant endpoints and agent-native builders. I also believe x402 is one of the core infrastructures in this direction.

The two paths have distinct differences. Since existing commerce will remain predominantly T2 for quite some time, the first path can yield visible results relatively quickly, including transaction volumes and partnerships. If the market focus begins to shift toward fully autonomous trading, Base would ultimately need to recalibrate. Focusing on T3 from the start may not yield significant financial results in the short term. Transaction frequencies may rise rapidly, but early activities are likely to consist mainly of small payments. Nevertheless, in the long term, this path directly points toward what I see as the endpoint of the agency economy. Base's current focus is also closer to this path.

Q2. Can Base capture meaningful value in agency commerce?

Simply put, Base needs to clarify why agency commerce should utilize Base or cryptocurrency. While low fees and small payments are attractive, they are not sufficient to create a strong moat. Credit card networks and existing payment providers are also addressing the same issues with delegated tokens and payment interfaces designed for agents. Stripe and Tempo's MPP (combining credit cards with stablecoins within a single protocol) is part of this trend. Frankly speaking, it is unlikely that credit card networks, already possessing a strong "money printing machine," will readily hand over the agency payment market to cryptocurrency.

The moat for cryptocurrency must come from permissionless participation and its trust model. Cost alone is insufficient. Agents and endpoints should be able to transact without individual accounts or merchant agreements. Software should directly hold assets, and transaction conditions should be enforceable through code. These advantages are most evident in the aforementioned T3 (fully autonomous, agent-native commerce) model. I wonder if Jesse also believes this area is the ultimate moat for cryptocurrency.

Ten years ago, small payments in Bitcoin were attempted. It failed to solve high payment costs, volatility, and wallet onboarding difficulties. More importantly, the demand source for repeating small payments—today's agents—had not yet clearly emerged.

Now, all three conditions exist simultaneously: Base offers low fees and high network performance, stablecoins are available, and AI agents need to purchase external resources.

I believe this gives us reason to revisit unanswered questions from the past.

Q3. What is Base's strategy in this field? How will it support the agent ecosystem?

Supporting builders through Base Batches and Network School may be part of the answer to this question. I want to ask more specifically: Will Base concentrate its support on a small number of core projects and infrastructures, or will it support a broader agent ecosystem? Will it prioritize supporting delegated agents linked to existing commerce or aim for headless merchants and fully autonomous agents as its major goals?

If Base targets the latter, mere funding and hackathons are not enough. It also needs tools that make paid endpoints easy to deploy, a distribution layer for agent discovery services, programmable wallets, identity and reputation systems, and stablecoin liquidity. I would like to hear Jesse's thoughts on which areas Base should build itself and which should be left to ecosystem builders.

Once again, I respect Jesse's decision to publicly admit mistakes and apologize. After reading his post, I am also contemplating Base's position in the agency economy.