Jesse Pollak, the creator of Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base, is stepping back from leading the Base App and handing the product’s development back to Coinbase. In a candid post on X, Pollak admitted that the network’s heavy emphasis on on-chain social experiences and creator coins failed to deliver the expected adoption, calling the first quarter of 2026 a “punch in the face.”
Pollak explained that his strategy was built on two core assumptions: that developers would power the next crypto adoption wave and that growth would come from new “onchain-native social experiences.” While he still believes in builders, he conceded that the bet on social was “definitively wrong.” “The entire social side of the market that many of us had been building towards—Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and yes, creator coins—disintegrated completely,” he wrote. Instead, prediction markets, perpetuals, and stablecoins emerged as the strongest adoption drivers.
The Base App, which launched in 2025 as a rebranding of Coinbase Wallet into an all-in-one platform combining trading, social, AI tools, and creator monetization, will now be led by Jordan Fish, known online as Cobie. Fish joined Coinbase after the exchange acquired his ICO launchpad Echo for roughly $375 million. Pollak noted that Cobie will have the freedom to expand the app beyond the Base ecosystem, even in ways Pollak “won’t love as the leader of Base.” Meanwhile, Pollak will devote his full attention to growing the Base blockchain itself.
Looking ahead, Pollak outlined a sharp pivot: Base will now prioritize trading – including tokenized stocks, memes, and “whatever you want to trade” – along with global stablecoin payments and AI agents. “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,” he said. The shift comes just days after Robinhood launched its own native Ethereum L2 focused on stock and meme trading, and against an industry-wide turn toward institutional tokenization and perpetuals trading. Base also recently suffered two consecutive mainnet stalls in late June, coinciding with a scheduled update that introduced new features.
