At BaseCamp last night, Base founder Jesse Pollak said Base was “beginning to explore” the launch of a native token. Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong later posted, “We are exploring the issuance of a native token for the Base network.”

It could become a crucial tool for accelerating decentralization and driving growth for creators and developers within the ecosystem. To be clear, there are no firm plans yet. We're simply updating our philosophy. At this point, we're still in the exploratory phase."

The news marks a shift in Coinbase’s stance on whether Base will launch a token.

Previously, Coinbase representatives have repeatedly stated that Base has no plans to issue a token, and that Base currently uses ETH as gas. The team also emphasized in a blog post on Monday that they currently have "no specific plans to share."

"Base is a bridge, not an island," Pollak said at the BaseCamp conference in Stowe, Vermont, adding that he hopes Base can form a closer connection with the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

Why issue currency?

"When Base launched, our priority was clear: building a secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly chain and ecosystem. Achieving these goals didn't require issuing a token, so we focused on our core product," the team wrote in a blog post. But now, the market environment seems to have quietly changed.

Since its launch in 2023, Base has achieved numerous milestones over the past year, including achieving sub-second, Asia-US tiered transactions. Notably, after introducing a permissionless fault proof mechanism, Base has entered Phase 1, following Vitalik Buterin's Rollup decentralized framework.

From the outside, there are obvious practical considerations behind Base's launch of token exploration.

Over the past few months, Base's liquidity has been shrinking rapidly. Data shows a net outflow of $4.6 billion over the past three quarters, and a cumulative outflow of $5.7 billion for the entire year, primarily flowing back into the Ethereum mainnet. While TVL (TVL) continues to grow on the surface, when converted to ETH, a sustained outflow of funds has been occurring since April of this year, demonstrating a lack of genuine long-term retention.

While there were some buzzworthy events during this period, such as the launch of TBA and Coinbase's integration with DEX, most were short-lived, failing to generate lasting user engagement and wealth creation. Analysts believe that Zora's "three-coin flywheel" never truly spun, while the out-of-the-box Virtual didn't receive the same ecosystem support. Base has long lacked killer applications to sustain its ecosystem.

In this market context, the team realized that relying solely on the user growth generated by the Coinbase brand and traffic portal was no longer sufficient to support the long-term development of the network. Therefore, issuing a token became a natural option. This not only allowed for more efficient capital retention on Base, preventing it from becoming a "passing-through" platform, but also helped transform short-term speculators into long-term stakeholders. It also provided more certain long-term incentives for high-quality developers, driving the implementation of more infrastructure and innovative applications.

As the team said, "Exploring the issuance of network tokens is one of the paths to realizing the vision of a global on-chain economy." This move not only carries the goal of accelerating decentralization, but also responds to the practical needs of ecological expansion for incentive mechanisms.

Furthermore, the Trump administration has placed cryptocurrency at the core of its regulatory landscape, encouraging regulators to create space for innovation and experimentation. This has also reduced Coinbase's regulatory compliance challenges in launching its own token. Meanwhile, Base has integrated into the Solana ecosystem via an open cross-chain bridge, demonstrating its strategic positioning as a bridge, not an island.

It can be seen from this that issuing coins is not only a tactical adjustment, but also a long-term choice that deeply binds the team, users, developers and capital, aiming to build an ecological synergy that can truly self-circulate and accumulate value.

The following is a translation of the English content:

Base's current status at BaseCamp 2025

At BaseCamp 2025 in Stowe, Vermont, we shared an update: Base has begun exploring a network token. As we begin this exploration, we're sharing this philosophical shift in advance as part of our commitment to building openly, but we don't have firm plans to share at this time. We also announced an open-source bridge built by Base, connecting Base and Solana, enabling interoperability between the two chains. Additionally, new features are making it easier to build, grow, and earn money on Base, including Base Batches 002 to help builders bring their ideas to life, more features in the Base app beta, and a new Base Build dashboard for builders to grow and earn money.

Explore Network Tokens

Until now, Base has not considered issuing a network token.

When Base launched, our priorities were clear: to build a secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly chain and ecosystem. Launching a token wasn’t necessary to achieve these goals; we wanted to focus on our core product.

This year, we achieved our North Star goal of sub-second, Asia-US grade transactions, and have expanded from a single chain to an open stack, making it simple for anyone to build, trade, and profit on the chain.

As we envision building a global on-chain economy, we believe it should be open and accessible. As our ecosystem grows and community engagement deepens, this has led us to rethink our philosophy. We are exploring a network token as a path to achieving our vision of a global on-chain economy. The Base Network Token has the potential to accelerate Base's decentralization and expand opportunities for builders and creators across the ecosystem.

We are in the early stages of exploration and do not have any specific details to share regarding timing, design, or governance. As we consider the possibilities, we have three commitments to the community:

1. We remain deeply committed to Ethereum and will continue to build on Ethereum.

2. As an American company, we are committed to working with regulators and lawmakers to do this right.

3. We are committed to bringing the community along with us as we build, listen, and learn in the open.

If we move forward with a token, it will be based on principles, values, and aligned with our long-term mission: to build a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom.

What else we announced at BaseCamp 2025

At BaseCamp, we also shared a major update on how we’re helping the ecosystem move forward. Overall, our goal is to make Base the best place to build, grow, and earn.

A bridge between Base and Solana

We believe Base should be a bridge, not an island. We can't bring the world to blockchain if everyone is building independent, isolated ecosystems. We want Base to be the hub of the entire on-chain economy, a universal blockchain where you can do everything, from payments to transactions, from building apps to social publishing.

We also believe that the global economy must be interoperable and connected. Users should be able to discover new applications, try new things, and unlock value wherever it exists, and builders should be able to seamlessly reach users across chains.

That’s why we’re excited to announce the bridge between Base and Solana.

This bridge lets you move assets seamlessly across chains by bridging between ERC 20 and SPL tokens, so you can do things like:

• Store and use SOL in any Base application

• Bring any Solana asset into any Base application

• Export any Base asset to Solana

This means builders can reach more users and liquidity, and users can more easily access the global on-chain economy. The bridge is now open source on Github and available on testnet, with mainnet launch expected in the coming weeks. This is just the beginning. Our goal is to make Base the interoperable hub for the global on-chain economy, and we'll be adding support for more chains in the future.

Base Batches 002

We know getting started can be difficult. We created Base Batches to provide any builder with a clear path to turn an idea into a product, and then grow that product into a business.

Earlier this year, Base Batches brought together over 5,000 developers from over 100 countries. Of those, 77 teams advanced to the finals, received mentorship, and earned a spot at our inaugural Demo Day. We awarded over $1 million in funding.

Base Batches provide new projects with the stage, tools, and community they need to build useful applications, reach high-quality users, and grow rapidly.

Base Batches 002 launched on September 29th. New content this time includes:

1. Provide funding, mentoring, and distribution to new developers from day one

2. A global environment where creators and founders can quickly test ideas

3. Showcase your best projects to the world at Devconnect Argentina’s Demo Day

Base app updates

This summer, we launched Base, an all-in-one app that combines social networking, app discovery, chat, payments, and transactions. Since launching in invite-only beta in July, the waitlist has grown to over 1 million people, and we're excited to see creators earning revenue while using the app. To date, over $500,000 has been paid out to creators, and over 50% of users who publish have earned revenue.

The Base app is designed with both users and builders in mind: it gives you direct distribution to millions of people, making it easy to launch, test, and grow your app from day one. This means builders who publish to the Base app instantly have access to a highly engaged, profitable community of users looking for new experiences.

We're still refining the new app experience, constantly listening to feedback, making improvements, and releasing updates. Since July, we've released:

• Easier to discover popular currencies

• Seamless in-stream transactions

• Faster performance on Android

• A new web experience that lets you share posts from anywhere

We're expanding access every week, with plans to open apps to everyone later this year. If you're building on Base, now's the time to start building mini apps so you're ready. Over 40% of Base app beta users are already using mini apps.

To make building mini-apps easier, we've launched Base Build, a hub for builders to access user analytics, distribution, and rewards. You can view metrics like active users, session duration, and which acquisition channels are performing best. You can also apply for $500 in free gas credits, with more builder rewards coming soon.

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