Most Influential: Jesse Pollak

Jesse Pollak, best known as the creator behind American crypto exchange Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base, has been seen as the person largely responsible for the network’s growth in popularity this year.

Pollak, who began at Coinbase in 2017, launched Base in 2023. Designed to make onchain activity cheaper and easier and to support a new wave of decentralized applications, Base represented the first time a major crypto exchange had launched its own layer-2 network.

This year, Base saw significant growth: crossing $15 billion in total value locked (TVL) in January and becoming one of the largest L2s by $10 billion (Arbitrum is the only layer-2 network larger than Base).

The rise of Base’s popularity is not only due to how low transaction costs are — well under a cent —, but also because of the growing DeFi applications available in its ecosystem, as well as social applications and memecoins that drew growth over the past year. (Pollak’s rising stardom was slightly dimmed when he faced heavy backlash over his $JESSE memecoin launch in November, after what many users claim that bots grabbed much of the supply and the token siphoned liquidity from other Base projects.)

In 2025, several projects on Coinbase’s Base network have broken out as major ecosystem drivers, with projects like decentralized exchange Aerodrome Finance, which surged to more than $1 billion in TVL in January 2025 and a core liquidity hub for the chain. Zora, a decentralized social network, also emerged as a standout, launching its token in April and riding Base’s growing onchain creator-economy trend. More broadly, Base itself has seen explosive growth across DeFi, social, and meme-driven applications, creating a feedback loop that amplifies demand for native protocols as the network positions itself as a home for this type of onchain culture and experimentation.

As for what the chain has next in store: Pollak hinted that there could be a native token coming to Base, creating much anticipation among users who are already driving activity.

Read more: Base Explores Issuing Native Token, Says Creator Jesse Pollak