Base oprichter geeft toe fouten te hebben gemaakt en zet in op trading, payments en AI

Jesse Pollak, de oprichter van het Base netwerk, gooit het roer om. Na een moeilijk begin van 2026 erkent hij openlijk dat zijn inzet op sociale producten en creator coins de verkeerde gok was. In een uitgebreide post legt hij uit wat er misging en waar Base de komende tijd op inzet: trading, betalingen en AI agents.

Een pijnlijk eerste kwartaal van 2026

Pollak beschrijft het eerste kwartaal van 2026 als een klap in het gezicht. Hij had ingezet op twee sporen: builders die crypto adoptie zouden stimuleren, en sociale ervaringen zoals creator coins, berichten en content. Het eerste spoor werkte, het tweede totaal niet. Platforms als Farcaster, Zora en miniapps vielen vrijwel volledig weg, en de creator coins waar Base op had gemikte volgden hetzelfde lot.

De schade was aanzienlijk. Base raakte achterop bij concurrenten op het gebied van perpetuals en prediction markets, en had nog veel werk te doen op het vlak van tokenisatie en betalingen. Pollak zegt wekelijks te zijn geconfronteerd met zijn fouten via Crypto Twitter en geeft aan dat dit zwaar woog. Toch kiest hij ervoor om door te bouwen in plaats van bij de pakken neer te zitten.

jessepollak @jessepollak

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 two pronged bet to bring base to the world: (1) builders would unlock the next wave of crypto adoption; (2) adoption would be driven by new onchain-native social experiences - creators, content, messaging. imo we made the right bet on builders, but obviously the wrong bet on social. builders did drive the next wave of crypto adoption - prediction markets, perpetuals, stablecoins - but social was not at the center of it. in fact, the entire social side of the market that many of us had been building towards - farcaster, zora, miniapps, and yes, creator coins - disintegrated completely. I was wrong - whether it was timing wrong (is $ansem a creator coin?) or fully wrong, only time will tell, but regardless, i was definitively wrong.

the collateral damage was pretty bad! and this year has been an exercise in eating shit. we realized how our focus on social had meant that base had fallen behind in key areas that were now increasingly critical - we had perps (shoutout avantis!) and prediction markets (shoutout limitless!), but both were well behind scaled competitors. and we had a lot of room to improve in unlocking base as a platform for tokenization and payments that really worked for enterprises. people lost confidence, and CT spectators reminded me weekly of all of my mistakes as often as they could. it felt bad man, still feels bad.

but if there’s one thing i’ve learned from the last decade of building in this space, it’s that when things feel the worst, the best thing to do is just put your head down and build. so that’s what i’m doing. I refocused my time and attention back to the chain away from the app, started writing code again, shipped a bunch of stuff (azul, beryl, b20, privacy, ledgers) and questioned a bunch of my assumptions: does crypto need social to grow? does base need an app? can base be bigger than coinbase?

I thought for a long time that social was the only thing that could drive the sort of viral growth to get crypto to a billion people. unsurprisingly, I now believe that’s wrong. It’s clear that better money is more than enough - we are seeing this live with stablecoins, predictions, perpetuals, tokenization and i only expect it to accelerate. I am now focused on bringing a billion people onchain just by making global finance actually work.

on the app, my focus is on building base into the blockchain for global finance. to that end, i’ve handed the base app back to the coinbase mothership, where my now good friend @cobie will be taking it from here to make it the best damn app for onchain you’ve ever seen, including expanding beyond the base ecosystem in ways that tbh i won’t love as the leader of base.

it’s incredibly hard to grow a decentralized network inside of a big public corporation. and i feel like much of the discourse on CT over the last week is downstream of this. the following things can be true: (1) base (and i) love memes and (2) brian probably won’t ever bullpost memes on the tl (this activity is illegal once you’re over 40 years of age). it’s weird and we’re working through it as we continue to decentralize base, which has been our commitment from the beginning.

we’re going to build base into the blockchain for global finance and do everything we can to be the place that the world’s money settles over the next century. we will surely have formidable competitors (welcome robinhood and stripe!) and people may abandon our cause, but we welcome the competition and believe it’s our duty to win the respect and commitment of those who rally to our banner.

in 2026, this concretely means three things: winning trading, payments, and agents.

[continued in the reply]

15 Jul 2026View full tweet on X ›

Cobie neemt Base App over, Pollak focust op de blockchain

Een concrete verandering is dat Pollak de Base App teruggeeft aan Coinbase. Bekende cryptofiguur Cobie neemt de ontwikkeling van die app over en krijgt de vrijheid om verder te gaan dan alleen het Base ecosysteem. Coinbase opent inmiddels ook registratie voor gebruikers in China, wat aangeeft dat het bedrijf ambitieuze groeiplannen heeft. Pollak zelf richt zich voortaan volledig op het bouwen van Base als blockchain voor de wereldwijde financiële sector.

Voor 2026 noemt hij drie concrete pijlers. Ten eerste trading: elk soort asset moet verhandelbaar zijn op Base, van getokeniseerde aandelen tot memecoins en app coins. Ten tweede betalingen via stablecoins die wereldwijd werken, zowel voor particulieren als bedrijven. Ten derde AI agents, omdat crypto als native geld voor computers de komende jaren biljarden aan nieuwe economische activiteit kan ontketenen. Concurrent Stripe en Robinhood worden daarbij met naam genoemd als serieuze uitdagers die Base verwelkomt.

jessepollak @jessepollak

trading means every asset. tokenized stocks, memes, app coins, whatever you want to trade. payments means stablecoins that work globally, for people and for enterprises. agents means accelerating all of it because crypto is native money for computers and artificial intelligence is going to create trillions of new economic actors.

and against these three pillars, builders are the backbone. If there’s one thing i’m deeply proud of since the beginning of base, alongside all the mistakes, it’s betting on builders. base is what it is because of the people who built it. not the roadmap, not the infrastructure - the builders who showed up, shipped, and kept going through every version of this, the good stretches and the hard ones. and we're going to keep backing them: Base Layer, Base Batches, the Base Ecosystem Fund, my time, my teams time, coinbase and base app distribution as much as we’re able to. we will do everything we can to make builders win on base. because when builders win, base wins.

if you’ve made it this far and you couldn’t already tell: i don't have everything figured out. we try stuff, we make mistakes, and we adapt in public. the feedback, even the sharp stuff, genuinely makes us better. we see it all, and even when we can't respond to everything, it burrows its way into my brain and makes me better. so thank you.

we are building a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. we will do this by doing the right thing, working hard, staying optimistic, pushing boundaries with creativity, and putting the team over the individual. and it’s working: with QoQ growth in dex share and payment volume, and a renewed focus on products that drive sustainable growth.

hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i’m sorry! (although if someone else builds content coins and they work then i’m going to lose it. and I'm also not going to just let $jesse fade away - when I launch something, I'm in it for the long term)

ok thats enough typing, back to work

15 Jul 2026View full tweet on X ›

Builders blijven de ruggengraat van Base

Ondanks alle fouten blijft Pollak trots op één ding: de inzet op builders. Hij stelt dat Base geworden is wat het is dankzij de mensen die er daadwerkelijk aan bouwden. Die ondersteuning wil hij voortzetten via initiatieven als Base Layer, Base Batches en het Base Ecosystem Fund.

Pollak sluit af met een eerlijke boodschap: hij heeft nog niet alles op een rijtje, maar wil in het openbaar experimenteren en leren van feedback. De creator coin strategie beschouwt hij als definitief mislukt en daarvoor biedt hij zijn excuses aan. Wel houdt hij een slag om de arm: als iemand anders content coins ooit wél tot een succes maakt, gaat hij zich er alsnog over verbazen.