Base Creator Jesse Pollak Says Social Bet was Wrong

Base creator Jesse Pollak says he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a “wrong bet” on social, leaving the chain to fall behind on prediction markets and perpetual futures. 

In a post to X on Wednesday, Pollak said he had bet that creator, content and messaging apps would drive adoption, but instead the market “disintegrated completely.” 

“We realized how our focus on social had meant that base had fallen behind in key areas that were now increasingly critical — we had perps (shoutout avantis!) and prediction markets (shoutout limitless!), but both were well behind scaled competitors.”

Dune Analytics data shows Base-native prediction market Limitless accounted for just 0.5% of total monthly notional volume across prediction markets in July. Perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) Avantis ranked 18th by reported 30-day notional trading volume, according to DefiLlama.

Pollak’s comments give further insight into the reversal of Base’s growth strategy earlier this year. While Base initially focused on social products such as Farcaster, Zora and miniapps to bring crypto to “a billion people,” Pollak said financial applications are the way forward for the network, with a focus on trading, payments and AI agents. 

Limitless Exchange’s monthly notional volume is only a fraction of its larger competitors. Source: Dune Analytics

Pollak added he will be returning leadership of the Base App to Coinbase, under Jordan Fish, known on X as “Cobie,” while he focuses on the Base blockchain. 

Coinbase CEO: “We messed up” on content coins

Pollak’s post came just days after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged content coins “didn’t work,” prompting the company to pivot earlier this year. 

“We messed up, time to turn the page,” Armstrong said on Monday. 

In February, Base sunset its Creator Rewards program and Farcaster-powered social feed as part of a strategic shift to tradable assets. 

Related: Moonbeam to pivot from Polkadot to Base, unveils AI agent framework

The Creator Rewards program launched in July 2025 and was intended to make the Ethereum layer-2 Base a more social ecosystem, where activity and engagement translate into earnings. Meanwhile, Pollak admitted the Base App was an “imperfect Farcaster client.” 

Base’s work on stablecoins, AI agents 

Last week, Base activated its B20 token standard on the mainnet, introducing a native framework for stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and other fungible tokens.  

In May, Base launched Base MCP (Model Context Protocol), a tool that lets users manage their crypto directly from an AI model’s chat interface and interact with crypto protocols such as Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr and Virtuals.

In April, Base said it was upgrading key systems in preparation for an AI agent economy as part of its 2026 roadmap. It highlighted real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, stablecoins, and prediction markets as being key growth areas in 2026.  

“We’re going to build base into the blockchain for global finance and do everything we can to be the place that the world’s money settles over the next century,” Pollak said on Wednesday.  

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