Jesse Pollak, the creator of the L2 network Base, acknowledged that his strategy focused on social services and applications "did not work." The project will now be developed by the Coinbase team.
lots of conversations about base over the last week. wanted to share my candid take after a week of listening and a lot of reflection over the last 6 months.
first off - in case it’s not obvious, the first quarter of 2026 was a punch in the face. I spent 2024 and 2025 making a…— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) July 15, 2026
"I was definitely wrong. I don’t know if the issue was just timing or the idea itself. [...] I long believed that only social products could bring a billion users to the crypto industry. Now I am convinced that is not the case," Pollak wrote.
He admitted that the Farcaster ecosystem, Zora, content creator tokens, and similar initiatives "completely fell apart." The main growth occurred in prediction markets, perpetual futures, stablecoins, and asset tokenization, areas where Base failed to establish a strong presence.
The network already had solutions from popular sectors, such as the perp-DEX Avantis and the platform for betting on real-world outcomes, Limitless. However, both are significantly lagging behind competitors, Pollak noted.
According to Dune, in July, Limitless accounted for 0.5% of the total nominal volume in the prediction markets segment. Avantis ranked 18th in reported trading volume, according to DefiLlama.
Earlier, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expressed a similar view, admitting that the bet on infrastructure for content creation did not pay off.
Agree with the first part and your point on content coins. They didn't work and we pivoted early this year. We messed up, time to turn the page.
I disagree about the AI agents part though. Base has been focused on trading, payments, and agents (in that order). I think all three…— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 13, 2026
New Strategy for Base
Pollak stated that he will now focus on developing Base as a blockchain for global finance. He identified key areas such as trading tokenized assets, stablecoin-based payments, and solutions for AI agents.
The project aims to compete with Robinhood and Stripe.
In July, the network activated the B20 standard, designed for launching "stablecoins," RWA, and other fungible tokens. In May, the team introduced Base MCP—a tool that allows AI assistants to initiate real on-chain operations within the network.
The Base application will be managed by the Coinbase team led by crypto investor Jordan Fish. The service is expected to become a multi-chain platform and expand beyond its current ecosystem.
Recall that earlier this year, the L2 project abandoned the Optimism stack in favor of its own architecture. In May, Base developers announced the integration of ZK proofs from Succinct Labs to enhance security and speed up transaction finalization.