Key highlights:
- Jesse Pollak said the network made the wrong choice in investing in social products
- Leadership of the Base App has now returned to Coinbase
- The platform will now focus on trading, payments, among other features
Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base, has revealed the app would be changing direction after admitting that the network's move into on-chain social products failed to deliver the growth many expected.
In a post shared on X, Pollak said he spent the last two years thinking that creator-focused tools and social experiences would bring crypto to mainstream users. However, he now says that the demand for those kinds of products faded while other sectors of the crypto industry grew.
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
Base admits social strategy failed
Pollak had hoped that products like Farcaster integrations, creator coins, mini apps, and content tools would bring in millions of new users to crypto. But as time passed, the plan did not play out as thought.
With developers driving adoption in products like stablecoins, prediction markets, and perpetual futures, social applications "disintegrated completely."
“I was definitively wrong. The collateral damage was pretty bad!” he said. “We realized how our focus on social had meant that Base had fallen behind in key areas that were now increasingly critical”
An example of these areas is prediction markets. Data from Dune Analytics showed that Limitless, a prediction market built on Base, had just a 0.5% share of the total monthly prediction market volume in July.
The platform had also launched perpetual futures through Avantis. But both products struggled in comparison to their rivals.
Source: Dune
Pollak said that the company underestimated how key financial applications would be for the next phase of crypto adoption.
This came after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made similar comments about the app. He also shared that the company's content coin strategy had not worked.
"They didn't work and we pivoted early this year. We messed up, time to turn the page," he said.
The company has already started making changes. Earlier this year, it shut down its Creator Rewards program and removed its Farcaster-powered social feed. The rewards program had launched in July 2025 and was meant to help creators earn income through engagement.
Leadership changes as focus shifts to finance
As part of the transition, Pollak is handing responsibility for Base back to Coinbase. The app will now be managed by Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie. Fish is a well-known investor and the founder of Echo, a startup funding platform that Coinbase bought last year for $375 million.
Meanwhile, Pollak will now return to developing the blockchain itself. His goal is to change the Base app into what he calls "the blockchain for global finance." This means building a system that is designed for payments, trading, and other functions.
Pollak also said that Base could still be among the top settlement layers for global money movement in the next couple of years. Last week, the network launched its B20 token standard on mainnet. This was built to support stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets more efficiently.
Also, this year, the company launched Base MCP. This is a tool that allows users to manage crypto assets with AI chat interfaces. The system connects with many protocols like Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr, and Virtuals.
