How Jesse Pollak Is Mapping Out Base's Next Chapter After the App Pivot

Summary

Jesse Pollak, creator of Base, discusses the Base app pivot to trading after a failed social bet, the handover to Cobie, Base chain's dominance in onchain trading and stablecoin settlement, competition with Robinhood Chain, Brian Armstrong's memecoin controversy, and upcoming network upgrades to scale transactions, support tokenized equities, and drive agentic payments.

• Base app pivots from social to focus solely on trading, led by Jordan Fish (Cobie).
• Base chain is the largest onchain spot market for crypto and a key stablecoin settlement rail.
• Robinhood Chain has surpassed Base in daily active users, seen as validation of onchain adoption.
• Brian Armstrong's profile picture change sparked a memecoin controversy; Pollak says it was not an endorsement.
• Upcoming Base upgrades (Azul, Barrel, Cobalt) target 20,000 TPS and improved account abstraction.
• B20 token standard and Base Ledgers aim to attract institutional enterprises with privacy and compliance.
• Agentic payments protocol x402 already processes 90% of agentic transactions on Base.
• Ecosystem projects like Morpho are growing rapidly; tokenized equities are expected to launch soon on Base.