Jesse Pollak, the founder of the L2 solution Base, has officially acknowledged that his strategy, focused exclusively on social services and applications, has failed. Further development of the project is now under the full control of the Coinbase team. This admission came as a result of a deep analysis of the situation over the past six months, especially after a "slap in the face" in the first quarter of 2026.
Pollak openly stated: "I was definitely wrong. I don't know if the problem was just the timing or the idea itself." He long believed that social products could bring a billion users to the crypto industry, but is now convinced otherwise. The Farcaster ecosystem, Zora, and creator content tokens, in his words, "completely fell apart," failing to live up to expectations.
Real growth in the industry, as practice has shown, came from completely different segments: prediction markets, perpetual futures, stablecoins, and tokenization of real-world assets. Base, unfortunately, failed to secure any significant positions in these areas. Although the network had solutions like perp-DEX Avantis and the Limitless platform, both significantly lag behind competitors. According to analytics, in July, Limitless accounted for only 0.5% of the total nominal volume in prediction markets, while Avantis ranked only 18th in trading volume.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong agreed with this assessment, acknowledging that the bet on infrastructure for content creation did not work out, and the company had pivoted as early as the beginning of the year. However, he noted that he disagrees with the criticism of AI agents — Base is making a separate bet on this direction.
New Course: From Social Networks to Global Finance
Pollak announced a shift in the development vector. Base will now be positioned as a blockchain for global finance. Key priorities include trading tokenized assets, stablecoin-based payments, and solutions for AI agents. The project aims to compete directly with giants like Robinhood and Stripe.
The technical foundation for this is already being laid. In July, the B20 standard was activated on the network, designed for issuing stablecoins, RWAs, and other fungible tokens. In May, the team introduced Base MCP, a tool that allows AI assistants to directly initiate on-chain operations.
The Base application itself is transitioning under the management of the Coinbase team, led by crypto investor Jordan Fish. The service is expected to become a multi-chain platform, expanding beyond the current ecosystem. Recall that earlier this year, Base already abandoned the Optimism stack in favor of its own architecture and integrated ZK-proofs from Succinct Labs.
My comment: The story of Base is a classic example of how even strong projects can make mistakes in choosing priorities. The market harshly punishes attempts to impose unproven narratives on users. The reorientation towards financial services and AI is a logical and timely step, but competition in these segments is already extremely high. Base's success will now depend not on ambitions, but on the speed and quality of executing the new strategy.