BlockBeats reported on July 16th that Base co-founder Jesse Pollak published a lengthy article, candidly reviewing the strategic gains and losses of the past six months. He admitted that in the dual-track strategy formulated for 2024-2025, "being optimistic about developers was right, but being optimistic about social was wrong"—the entire on-chain social ecosystem, including Farcaster, Zora, MiniApps, and creator tokens, has completely collapsed. This misjudgment has caused Base to lag behind its large-scale competitors in key areas such as perpetual contracts and prediction markets, and also has significant weaknesses in tokenization and enterprise payments.
Jesse described the first quarter of 2026 as "taking a punch to the face," with the community reminding him of his mistakes every week. "It felt bad, and it still feels bad." But the core lesson he learned from ten years of crypto entrepreneurship was that "when you feel worst, the best option is to keep your head down and get to work." Jesse then shifted his focus back from the application layer to the blockchain layer, writing code himself and launching a series of projects including Azul, Beryl, B20, privacy features, and Ledgers. At the same time, he reflected on three core assumptions: whether crypto needs social interaction to grow, whether Base needs its own application, and whether Base can surpass Coinbase.
Jesse's conclusion is clear: a better currency is enough to drive growth, as evidenced by stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetual contracts, and tokenization, with a focus on "making global finance truly function and bringing a billion people on-chain." Around this goal, Base will focus on three pillars in 2026: trading (covering all asset classes including tokenized stocks, Meme coins, and application tokens), payments (a global stablecoin for individuals and businesses), and smart agents (crypto is the native currency of computers; AI will create trillions of new economic entities).
At the organizational level, Jesse has handed the Base application back to Coinbase, with Cobie taking over to build cross-ecosystem on-chain applications. He also admitted that developing a decentralized network within a large listed company is "extremely difficult," and that Brian, as CEO, cannot post memes on the public timeline. He is continuing to push for the decentralization of Base.
Jesse emphasized that builders are the backbone of Base, and that Base will continue to support builders in all aspects through Base Layer, Base Batches, and the Ecosystem Fund. "When builders win, Base wins."