Base 放棄社交方向，創始人承認戰略失敗

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010 )

Base, long regarded as the "King of L2s," has officially ended its three-year "Age of Exploration."

Early this morning, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak reflected on the ecosystem's development direction over the past two years, admitting that his previous bet on on-chain native social was a mistake. He stated that social directions such as Farcaster, Zora, Miniapps, and creator coins failed to become the core driver of crypto adoption. Consequently, Base has fallen behind some competitors in areas like perpetual contracts, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. Additionally, he emphasized that the Base APP will be handed over to Cobie, a community leader whom Coinbase acquired through a significant talent acquisition.

Previously, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, when responding to community skepticism, also admitted that "betting on content tokens was a mistake."

In 2026, Base, which had wavered on the issue of launching a token, has now entered an awkward phase of development, perhaps reaffirming a truth: No trading, no crypto.

Base's Transformation: Founder Returns to Coding, All-in-One APP Handed to Coinbase Team

Let's first focus on Jesse's "mea culpa" for the Base ecosystem.

In this lengthy post, Jesse first admitted his mistake — while betting on blockchain technology to drive crypto adoption was correct, his choice of sub-sector was wrong, mistakenly betting on social experiences to drive crypto adoption.

Looking back, the Base ecosystem seems to have always been in a state of "self-congratulation" —

• On the leadership front, Jesse constantly spoke of the "creator economy," interacting with community members under this banner, encouraging all creators to launch tokens and NFTs, claiming that the "on-chain creator economy would rewrite industry development." In reality, however, the on-chain creator ecosystem on Base was extremely poor, with most creators earning even less than developers who piggybacked on trending topics on pump.fun.
• In terms of development strategy, Base persistently championed "Onchain Summer." In reality, Base followed a strategy of trailing behind Solana and BNB Chain. When the Solana Meme coin craze hit, Base also jumped on the Meme coin bandwagon; when Chinese-themed Meme coins gained traction on BNB Chain, Base quickly tried to imitate. Its previous collaborations with entities like McDonald's often amounted to superficial marketing stunts with no real action.
• Regarding transaction activity, data previously indicated that over 80% of activity on Base was generated by a small number of addresses trading among themselves, making the real user base extremely limited. Even the transaction volumes for Coinbase-promoted areas like x402 and AI Agent payments struggled to achieve breakthrough results, remaining in a state of insular development.

The failure of SocialFi platforms like Farcaster and Zora is already well documented. The former's founder has moved on to work on payments at Tempo; the latter seems to have "completed its task" after launching a token, but the token has dropped by over 80%.

Jesse's envisioned beautiful picture of "reaching billions of people globally through social media via crypto" didn't materialize. After all, Web2 social media products are a dime a dozen, not to mention the established giants with better user experiences, first-mover advantages, and richer creator content.

Often, when you think you're playing with Memes, creating memes, and invigorating the community, you're actually building your own information cocoon, artificially creating cliques, and deliberately raising entry barriers.

The act of handing over Base APP, the ecosystem's flagship product, to the Coinbase team seems more like returning Base to the Coinbase fold, subjecting it to unified management and existing as a part and component of the Coinbase ecosystem. To some extent, this expands the openness of Base APP, naturally meaning it no longer solely belongs to the Base ecosystem.

For crypto projects, focusing on finance, trading, and investments remains the industry's main thread. The on-chain Perp platforms and prediction market platforms that have thrived amidst market volatility in the past two years have precisely hit this trend, even benefiting from high-volatility, high-risk market conditions to earn more protocol and platform revenue.

In light of this, Base has finally seen the light. No longer fixated on "decentralized social" and the "creator economy," it is pivoting towards three major directions: Trading, Payments, and AI Agents.

A New Chapter for Base: Focusing on Trading, Payments, and AI Agent Development

It's never too late to mend.

Although Base has taken many detours, it seems that Jesse, Coinbase CEO, and others have identified the problems and offered their solutions.

Earlier, Brian Armstrong responded to community skepticism, stating, "Base's main business focuses on Trading, Payments, and AI Agent services (in that order). I see these three as deeply interconnected. For example, to process payment transactions, you need foreign exchange resources; while agent services involve a significant amount of trading and payment business. By the way, currently, most resources are allocated to the trading business. Perhaps these haven't yet materialized into external applications, but that's the reality."

In his post today, Jesse also stated that Base will position itself as the "blockchain for global finance," focusing on three key directions in 2026: Trading, Payments, and AI Agents. Specifically,

• Trading covers tokenized stocks, Meme coins, and application tokens;
• Payments revolves around global stablecoins for individuals and businesses;
• AI Agents will leverage cryptocurrency as computer-native money to serve participants in the future large-scale machine economy.

Base's future business focus isn't just talk; it's a relatively optimal choice based on current industry trends and its own advantages.

In trading, despite limited active users, Base's advantages like low gas friction costs, the Ethereum ecosystem layer, and backing from Coinbase's compliant US status ensure its foundational edge and value in developing tokenized stocks, Meme coins, and legitimate projects.

In payments, Base's low interaction costs, the x402 protocol foundation, and support from Circle's USDC provide a strong base for individual and institutional payments and stablecoin adoption. Coupled with an "all-in-one application" like Base APP, if it can subsequently onboard more supply-side brands, merchants, and institutional users, it has the potential to drive mass stablecoin adoption in the US and worldwide.

Regarding AI Agent services, this step seems more like an early move to position for the future AI Agent economy. Although AI Agents are still in early development stages, considering news like OpenAI's GPT 5.6, Anthropic's Fable 5 model, and Apple's recent decision to partner with Alibaba's Qwen model for AI features, the day when AI Agents widely use cryptocurrency for payments, transactions, and consumption will arrive soon. Earlier, according to official news from Alibaba, as of May this year, the cumulative number of autonomous AI-driven payment orders on Alipay had reached 300 million (covering scenarios like AI agent payments, AI ordering, and AI consumption, such as payments completed via AI applications like Qwen and Rokid).

Of course, the shift in Base's strategic direction also comes with personnel changes within the larger Coinbase organization.

Coinbase Organizational Personnel Changes: Some Leave the Circle, Others Keep Coding

Previously, Coinbase's Engineering Lead, Brock Miller, publicly announced his departure, joining Anthropic as a member of its technical staff. When cryptocurrency is no longer the trend, some people choose to go with the flow and join the AI revolution.

In early July, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal announced his departure to join a startup. He added, "I will continue to advise Coinbase and be involved in the Coinbase Trust Charter work through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency." Subsequently, Coinbase announced Molly Abraham would lead the legal team as General Counsel, and Ryan Van Grack would become Vice Chairman, expected to take on broader, more public-facing responsibilities.

This is a case of someone leaving but still maintaining a cooperative relationship with Coinbase.

As for the person writing the code, that would be none other than Base founder Jesse — he stated personally: "I've already started coding again and have launched some products."

Of course, the departures or changes of the above personnel might not solely reflect their own will; they may also be influenced by the impact of AI Agent development.

Recently, Coinbase Platform Lead Rob Witoff stated that currently, over 95% of the company's code is written by or with the assistance of AI, a significant increase from the 40% disclosed in February this year. He said in an interview: "In fact, 100% of Coinbase employees use AI every day." He added that currently, most Coinbase engineers run 5 to 10 AI Agents simultaneously. The combined working capacity of these AI Agents is equivalent to about 1,200 employees.

He anticipates that by 2030, Coinbase's AI Agents could potentially handle a workload equivalent to 100,000 employees. However, he noted that critical areas like core cryptography will still require human involvement, while AI is mainly used for code testing, bug checking, and prototyping.

It's not just the Base ecosystem that will serve the AI Agent economy in the future; perhaps the majority of Coinbase's own employees will also be replaced by AI Agents eventually.