Base Founder: Bet on On-Chain Social Was a Mistake, Will Focus on Trading, Payments, and AI Agents

Odaily Odaily reports that Base founder Jesse Pollak published a review of the past two years' development direction, acknowledging that his previous bet on on-chain native social features was a mistake. He stated that social directions such as Farcaster, Zora, Miniapps, and creator coins failed to become the core driving force for crypto adoption, which consequently caused Base to lag behind some competitors in areas like perpetual contracts, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments.

Pollak indicated that in the future, Base will position itself as the "blockchain for global finance," with a focus on three major directions in 2026: trading, payments, and AI agents. Among these, trading will cover tokenized stocks, Meme coins, and application tokens; payments will revolve around global stablecoins for individuals and businesses; and AI agents will utilize cryptocurrency as native money for computers to serve participants in the future large-scale machine economy.

Furthermore, the Base application will be handed over to the Coinbase team, with Cobie taking over to push it forward, potentially expanding beyond the Base ecosystem. Pollak also mentioned that Base will continue to support developers through Base Layer, Base Batches, the Ecosystem Fund, and Coinbase distribution resources.