Key Facts

• Jesse Pollak spent the last two years betting that builders and onchain-native social experiences, including Farcaster, Zora, mini apps, and creator coins, would fuel crypto's next growth wave, but acknowledged that this strategy left Base behind in key areas such as trading, payments, and tokenization.
• Pollak's bet on onchain social applications and creator coins failed to drive crypto adoption as expected, with social applications "disintegrating completely," and he admitted that he was "definitively wrong" in his approach.
• Jordan Fish, also known as "Cobie," will take over leadership of the Base app and work to make it "the best damn app for onchain," including expanding beyond the Base ecosystem, while Base itself will prioritize trading, payments, and AI agents.
• Fish is also the founder of Echo, a platform that allows startups to raise funds directly from their communities, which Coinbase acquired for $375 million last year.
• As part of the strategic pivot, Base will focus on becoming infrastructure for global finance, with Pollak refocusing on developing the underlying blockchain and Fish overseeing the development of the Base app.