Developer's Personal Account: I Wasted Three Years on Base

Original Title: Base Stole 3 Years of My Life

Original Author: @weretuna

Original Compilation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Base once attracted countless developers with the slogan "Build on Base. We will support you." However, there is often a layer of silence between promises and reality.

The author of this article, @weretuna, is the co-founder of @pndmdotorg, a studio focused on creating viral Ponzi-style on-chain games on Solana. Using his team's three-year personal experience as a thread, this article narrates their journey from investment and waiting to disappointment, and then the turning point of rapid growth after migrating to Solana: what ultimately determines the success or failure of an ecosystem is never slogans, but who is willing to provide real resources and attention to applications. For all builders still "waiting for support," this is a stark reminder of reality.

The following is the original text:

"Build on Base. We will support you."

That was their promise. We believed it for three whole years. During those three years, we launched over 10 products: games, AI agents, prediction markets, zkTLS-related products. We poured almost our entire lives into developing on Base.

And what did we get in return?

Nothing. Not a single retweet. Not a single reply. Not even a group chat.

Last year, we created @infecteddotfun—the most breakout, viral game on Base. We grew a brand new account to 50,000 followers in a month. It was blowing up across all platforms, people couldn't stop talking about it.

But Base didn't even retweet our launch tweet.

At that moment, I finally understood completely: something was wrong.

And it was seriously wrong.

Why We Believed

When I first discovered Base, it was almost a "no-brainer" choice. Back then, L2 fragmentation was a complete mess. Building a product was hard enough, choosing which chain to build on was even harder.

Then Base launched—backed by Coinbase, with built-in "friend.tech." Jesse and the team pushed the "app-first" narrative incredibly hard. For the first time in a long while, it felt like someone finally cared about applications, not just infrastructure.

It looked like a chain that truly "put builders first." They said they cared about developers. They said they'd help with marketing. They said they were different.

Looking back, it was just better marketing. And we fell for it.

The Slow Awakening

As time went on, my faith in Base began to crack.

The first real fissure was when they started pushing Farcaster and Zora hard—not because those products were necessarily the best, but because they had invested in those companies. That's when I understood how the game really works.

The crypto industry loves to pretend blockchains are "permissionless, open": anyone can come, the best products win. Because so few applications ever achieve true PMF, I always thought this space encouraged experimentation, encouraged diversity.

But the reality is: either you build what they like, or you're in the in-crowd. Everyone else is just "set dressing" to bring attention and liquidity to the chain.

Yet on X, they'd still say: "Build on Base, we'll help you break out."

And we believed. We spent 3 years building. We launched over 10 apps. We bet our lives on it.

But they never replied to us on X. Not on Discord. Not on Telegram. We couldn't even get a group chat.

Support? Zero.

I think the reason is simple: we weren't building what they liked.

Doing It Ourselves

So we decided to stop waiting. Fine, we'll break out on our own.

We spent months brainstorming, and finally created @infecteddotfun—a game about "going viral on the blockchain."

It exploded.

A brand new account, 50k followers in a month. Became one of the most breakout games on Base.

Only then did the Base team finally start replying to us. They said: "We'll support your launch." They said: "Leave it to us." They said: "Just wait."

So we waited.

Launch day came. Guess what? Still, nothing.

No tweet. No retweet. No support.

Imagine: you spend 5 months building a product, finally get it hot enough for them to promise "support," and then at the crucial moment, that support just vanishes.

When I asked why, the answers were vague, political, and made no sense.

Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

The worst part isn't what happened to us.

The worst part is, it's happening to everyone. But no one dares to speak up. Because once you're on Base, you're a "hostage." You don't want to burn bridges, what if you need them someday? So you stay silent.

And Base keeps pretending they support developers.

If you only want to support a few handpicked projects, fine. Just say that. Don't pick "favorites" while cosplaying as the chain that "supports all builders." What they say and what they do are completely different things.

So we left.

After Leaving, Everything Changed

We migrated to Solana.

6 months later, we built @addicteddotfun, the biggest crypto game of 2025. $4M in revenue in 48 hours.

We didn't suddenly get smarter. We just left a chain that treats developers like NPCs. Our next game, @jaileddotfun, is also launching soon on Solana. All future games will be built on Solana.

We will never build another product on Base or Ethereum again.

Conclusion

I used to think the competition between Ethereum and Solana was good. Developers should build wherever they want. But after wasting 3 years of my life, I think it's actually a net negative for the industry.

Too many great builders are still stuck in ecosystems like Base. I'm not surprised at all: many would see 10x, even 100x growth just by moving to Solana, just like we did.

Developers should go where the users are. And right now, the users and liquidity are on Solana. This isn't a "chain maximalist" stance, it's outcome-oriented—based on our own data and the experiences of our friends.

I've wasted enough time on Base.

So you don't have to.

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