Written by: Jonah

Translated by: Luffy, Foresight News

Should developers build on the Robinhood public chain or the Stripe-affiliated Tempo public chain? Both projects share a common core principle: the operators control both the underlying public chain platform and the largest applications on-chain.

Looking at past examples from Amazon, Microsoft, to Coinbase's Base chain, this "platform + proprietary leading application" model tends to create conflicts of interest, negatively impacting the developers on the platform: developers bear the risk of platform control in exchange for traffic benefits, yet face the platform's uncertain profit orientation. This article will break down the conflicts of interest, the actual impact on developers, and the corresponding risk avoidance solutions.

Alluring Hook: Traffic Distribution Support

What is the initial motivation for developers to choose corporate public chains? Some public chains directly offer high onboarding subsidies; in more cases, the core selling point of public chains is traffic support. Taking Coinbase Base as an example, its core promotional logic is: by joining the Base ecosystem, the platform will drive exposure for the developers' projects through the Coinbase wallet or app. The Robinhood public chain and Stripe's Tempo also follow this logic.

Theoretically, this is a win-win situation: acquiring customers from scratch is very difficult; developers can quickly cold-start relying on the platform's existing traffic; meanwhile, the public chain can extract transaction fees from the projects, and if the platform drives traffic to the projects, it can also collect promotional commissions, effectively monetizing developers' R&D results.

However, various issues arise after implementation, stemming from the fact that platforms naturally prioritize supporting their own native products over those of third-party developers. Coinbase allocates resources to its own exchange and wallet; Robinhood prioritizes its brokerage and wallet; Stripe pushes its self-developed payment system. Below, we will dissect the five major risks.

Risk One: The Platform Competes Directly with Developers

Companies that operate both the underlying platform and on-chain applications have a long-standing history of suppressing third-party developers. The Wall Street Journal once reported that Amazon's management would access third-party sellers' operational data, select popular products, and launch their own competing products. Retailers validate market demand on Amazon's platform, yet Amazon competes with them based on exclusive data advantages.

Another classic example is Microsoft versus Netscape browser. Netscape relied entirely on Windows to gain users, and Microsoft promptly pre-installed the IE browser into the operating system, completely defeating its competitor. Firms like Base, Robinhood public chain, and Tempo experience the same conflict of interest with the third-party projects that join them.

Risk Two: Companion Wallets Will Not Bind to a Single Public Chain

Wallets have no incentive to only promote projects on this particular developer chain. The core competitiveness of wallet products is to provide users with access to services for all industry crypto assets; if they only support a single public chain, the product's competitiveness would significantly weaken, leading users to switch to multi-chain wallets. Therefore, the Coinbase wallet must be compatible with Solana, and the Robinhood and Tempo companion wallets will face similar compatibility pressures in the future.

This means wallets will inevitably display assets and applications from other public chains. In fact, the optimal product strategy for wallets is to directly integrate the leading applications in the space—just like how the Phantom wallet integrates Hyperliquid perpetual contract trading, even though that application is not deployed on the wallet's affiliated public chain.

This logic directly undermines the traffic advantage touted by enterprise chains: wallets, driven by their own development needs, will curate high-quality applications from across the network and expose them uniformly, allowing non-native projects to also gain traffic, sharply reducing the rare value of joining these enterprise chains.

Risk Three: Competing Products on the Platform Will Exclude Developers' Products

Industry players that have a competitive relationship with the enterprise have no incentive to promote projects within its ecosystem. Why support the competitive ecosystem? The USDC has faced a similar predicament in the past: due to its binding with Coinbase, many third-party platforms were unwilling to list the stablecoin. Similarly, projects only deployed on the Robinhood chain will not be actively integrated and promoted by the Coinbase wallet, and vice versa.

Risk Four: Platforms Control Users and Split Developers' Profits

There is a general rule in the crypto industry: the party that controls the end users typically earns significantly more than the protocol that is integrated into the platform, continuously squeezing the protocol's profits until they approach marginal costs. I have elaborated on this business model in my articles on "Value Capture Logic" and AI agents. Even if developers join enterprise chains and the platform fulfills its commitment to traffic support, relying entirely on a single platform's distribution channel remains highly risky—platforms hold the power of user voice and possess strong bargaining power, continually compressing developers' profit margins.

A more prudent route is to build independent distribution channels, using third-party platforms merely as traffic accelerators. Hyperliquid and Polymarket are typical examples: they establish independent user outreach channels and deploy their protocols across major platforms through developer incentive codes.

Risk Five: Promised Traffic Support May Fall Completely Flat

The traffic exposure promised by the platform may not be fulfilled at all. Many developers complain that the Coinbase wallet has long prioritized social features, providing almost no exposure resources for projects within the Base chain; although Base's official statement indicates they will rectify this, it sufficiently proves that strategic adjustments at high corporate levels directly determine the quality of traffic support policies.

How Should Developers Respond?

In comparison, the advantages of purely neutral public chains are particularly prominent. Ethereum and Solana do not inherently possess such platform risks and are entirely neutral bases: any developer deploying on Ethereum does not have to worry about the Ethereum official launching similar applications to compete with them. This neutrality is a long-underestimated core advantage.

So, should developers join corporate public chains?

Here are several ways to mitigate the risks arising from conflicts of interest:

• The platform offers high onboarding subsidies (this model is more common in public chain foundations, and less so in corporate chains); developers can weigh whether the subsidy benefits can cover potential risks;
• The platform provides a strong written commitment, ensuring it will not engage in competition and implement traffic support (but business history shows that such agreements have very weak binding power and can easily become ineffective);
• Autonomous risk dispersion: multi-chain deployment + self-built traffic channels. This allows for rights to choose from multiple ecosystems and protects their own profit margins.

From this perspective, enterprise public chains are suited for the early stages of project cold starts, leveraging platform traffic for cold starts but with the core goal of retaining their own user base, rather than being long-term dependent on the platform.

Currently, corporate public chain business models remain in their infancy, and in the future, platforms may introduce solutions to alleviate existing conflicts while also giving rise to entirely new risks.