Base creator Jesse Pollak says he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a \u201cwrong bet\u201d on social, leaving the chain to fall behind on prediction markets and perpetual futures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a post to X on Wednesday, Pollak said<\/span><\/a> he had bet that creator, content and messaging apps would drive adoption, but instead the market \u201cdisintegrated completely.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe realized how our focus on social had meant that base had fallen behind in key areas that were now increasingly critical \u2014 we had perps (shoutout avantis!) and prediction markets (shoutout limitless!), but both were well behind scaled competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n Dune Analytics data shows<\/a> Base-native prediction market Limitless accounted for just 0.5% of total monthly notional volume across prediction markets in July. Perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) Avantis ranked 18th by reported 30-day notional trading volume, according<\/a> to DefiLlama.<\/p>\n Pollak\u2019s comments give further insight into the reversal of Base\u2019s growth strategy earlier this year. While Base initially focused on social products such as Farcaster, Zora and miniapps to bring crypto to \u201ca billion people,\u201d Pollak said financial applications are the way forward for the network, with a focus on trading, payments and AI agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Limitless Exchange\u2019s monthly notional volume is only a fraction of its larger competitors. Source: <\/em>Dune Analytics<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Pollak added he will be returning leadership of the Base App to Coinbase, under Jordan Fish, known on X as \u201cCobie,\u201d while he focuses on the Base blockchain.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pollak\u2019s post came just days after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged content coins \u201cdidn\u2019t work,\u201d prompting the company to pivot earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe messed up, time to turn the page,\u201d Armstrong said<\/span><\/a> on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n In February, Base sunset its Creator Rewards program and Farcaster-powered social feed as part of a strategic shift to tradable assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Moonbeam to pivot from Polkadot to Base, unveils AI agent framework<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n The Creator Rewards program launched in July 2025 and was intended to make the Ethereum layer-2 Base a more social ecosystem, where activity and engagement translate into earnings. Meanwhile, Pollak admitted the Base App was an \u201cimperfect Farcaster client.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Last week, Base activated its B20 token standard<\/span><\/a> on the mainnet, introducing a native framework for stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and other fungible tokens.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In May, Base launched Base MCP (Model Context Protocol), a tool that lets users manage their crypto directly<\/span><\/a> from an AI model\u2019s chat interface and interact with crypto protocols such as Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr and Virtuals.<\/p>\n In April, Base said it was upgrading key systems in preparation for an AI agent economy as part of its 2026 roadmap<\/span><\/a>. It highlighted real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, stablecoins, and prediction markets as being key growth areas in 2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to build base into the blockchain for global finance and do everything we can to be the place that the world\u2019s money settles over the next century,\u201d Pollak said on Wednesday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Magazine: <\/strong><\/em>Is Robinhood Chain\u2019s success bullish or bearish for ETH the asset?<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Base creator Jesse Pollak says he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a \u201cwrong bet\u201d on social, leaving the chain to fall behind on prediction markets and perpetual futures.\u00a0 In a post to X on Wednesday, Pollak said he had bet that creator, content and messaging apps would drive 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PLUG<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Base creator Jesse Pollak says he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a \u201cwrong bet\u201d on social, leaving the chain to fall behind on prediction markets and perpetual futures.\u00a0 In a post to X on Wednesday, Pollak said he had bet that creator, content and messaging apps would drive…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36827,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36825\/revisions\/36827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Coinbase CEO: \u201cWe messed up\u201d on content coins<\/h2>\n
Base\u2019s work on stablecoins, AI agents\u00a0<\/h2>\n