Loss of style and self-innovation: Jesse explains in detail why the Base Chain broke down in crypto social networking?

Source: Jessepollak, Head of Base

Original title: Jesse Long Article Reflects on Base Chain: Betting on social and content tokens is completely wrong

TL; DR:

· Jesse Pollak acknowledged that Base's bet in the direction of developers was correct, but the strategy around social, creator, and content tokens completely failed, causing Base to lag behind in areas such as perpetual contracts, market forecasting, tokenization, and corporate payments.

· Base will be repositioned as a “blockchain serving global finance,” focusing on the three directions of transactions, stablecoin payments, and AI agents in 2026.

· Jesse has returned the Base App to Coinbase, taken over by Cobie, and has redirected her personal energy to the Base chain and underlying technology construction.

· Base will continue to support developers through ecosystem funds, project plans, and Coinbase's distribution resources. Jesse also apologized for the previous misjudgment on content tokens, but said he would not give up $JESSE.

Over the past week, there has been a lot of discussion around Base. After a week of listening to opinions and reflecting on my experiences over the past 6 months, I wanted to be honest about my views.

First, if that wasn't obvious enough, then the first quarter of 2026 definitely hit us hard.

In 2024 and 2025, I made two decisions that I wanted to use to drive Base globally:

1. Developers will drive the next round of popularity of cryptographic applications;

2. The new wave of popularity will be driven by on-chain native social experiences, including creators, content, and messaging.

In my opinion, we were right to bet on developers, but clearly wrong to bet on social.

Developers have indeed promoted the next round of popularity of crypto applications, predicting that the market, perpetual contracts, and stablecoins will all develop, but social networking is not at the center of this round of growth. In fact, the entire crypto social space that many people previously co-built, including Farcaster, Zora, Mini Apps, and of course creator tokens, has completely collapsed.

I was wrong. Whether it's just a mistake in judging the timing, or is the whole direction itself wrong, maybe only time can tell. For example, does $ANSEM count as a creator token? But in any case, I was definitely wrong in my judgment at the time.

The collateral effects of this are quite serious. I've been suffering the consequences of these mistakes since this year.

We are aware that due to its focus on the social sector, Base has fallen behind in some increasingly important key directions. We have Avantis, a perpetual contract platform, and Limitless, a prediction market, but both clearly lag behind competitors that have already formed a large scale. We also have a lot of room for improvement in making Base a truly business-friendly tokenization and payment platform.

People have lost faith in Base, and bystanders on Crypto Twitter keep mentioning my mistakes almost every week. It wasn't a good feeling, and it still is.

But the past decade of construction experience in this industry has taught me that when things seem worst, the best option is to focus on construction.

So I started doing that too.

I switched my time and attention back from the app to the Base chain, started writing code again, and launched projects such as Azul, Beryl, B20, privacy, and ledgers one after another. At the same time, I've also re-examined many of my previous assumptions:

Does the crypto industry have to rely on social networking to grow?

Does Base require an app?

Can Base grow into a larger network than Coinbase?

For a long time, I thought only social products could generate enough viral growth to allow encryption to reach 1 billion people. Now, I think this judgment was also wrong.

The facts have shown that a better currency alone is enough to drive the growth of the crypto industry. The development of stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, and tokenization is proving this, and I expect this trend to accelerate.

Now, my goal is to bring 1 billion people to the chain by making the global financial system really work.

On the application side, my current focus is on building Base into a blockchain that serves global finance. For this reason, I have returned the Base App to Coinbase. Next, Cobie, who is now my friend, will take over and work to make it the best on-chain app.

This also includes expanding the scope of business beyond the Base ecosystem. Frankly speaking, as the head of Base, I wouldn't want to see this happen.

Developing a decentralized network within a large listed company is extremely difficult. I think many of the discussions on Crypto Twitter this past week are also related to this situation.

The following two things can be established at the same time:

1. Base and I both love memes;

2. Brian will probably never post meme-heavy content on his timeline — this kind of behavior is probably “illegal” after a person is over 40.

This relationship is a bit complicated indeed. As Base continues to advance decentralization, we're also working to address these issues. Decentralization has been our promise since the beginning.

We will build Base into a blockchain that serves global finance, and make every effort to make it a place for global fund settlement for the next century.

We're definitely going to run into strong competitors, and welcome Robinhood and Stripe to the fray. There may also be people who will leave, but we welcome competition and feel it is our responsibility to earn the respect and recognition of our supporters.

Specifically, by 2026, this means we need to take the lead in three directions: transactions, payments, and agents.

The deal covers all assets, including tokenized stocks, memes, app tokens, and any other asset that people want to trade.

Payments mean creating stablecoins that can be used globally and serve both individuals and businesses.

Agents will accelerate development in all of these areas because cryptocurrencies are the native currency of computers, and AI will create trillions of new economic agents.

Under these three pillars, developers have always been the foundation.

Other than the achievements and mistakes we've made since Base was founded, if there's one thing I'm proud of, it's that we've always chosen to bet on developers.

Base was able to grow to where it is today because of the people involved in building it. What really decided Base wasn't the roadmap, nor the infrastructure, but the developers who came here, launched products, and continued to build even through good and difficult times after Base experienced changes time and time again.

We will continue to support them, including distribution support through Base Layer, Base Batches, Base Ecosystem Fund, and distribution support within my capabilities, my team, Coinbase, and Base App.

We do everything we can to help developers succeed on Base. Base only succeeds because developers succeed.

If you've read this, you should be able to see that I haven't figured out all the questions.

We try, make mistakes, and publicly change direction. Feedback from the outside world, even sharp criticism, can really help us improve.

We've seen all the feedback. Even if I can't respond one by one, they stay in my mind and drive me to keep improving. So, thank you all.

We are building a global economy that fosters innovation, creativity, and freedom. We'll achieve this goal by doing the right thing, working hard, being optimistic, pushing boundaries with creativity, and putting the team above the individual.

These efforts are paying off: Base's DEX market share and payments are growing quarter-on-quarter, and we're refocusing our focus on products that drive sustainable growth.

Let's hope we can finally stop talking about content tokens now. I made a mistake in my judgment at the time, and I'm sorry about that.

However, if others actually succeed with content tokens in the future, I might not be able to stand it.

Also, as long as I launch a project, I will participate in it for a long time.

OK, I've written enough, keep working.

Twitter:https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN

Compare the TG exchange group:https://t.me/BitPushCommunity

Compare TG subscriptions:https://t.me/bitpush