Base’s Social Strategy Hurt Its Position in Prediction Markets and Perps, Says Pollak

Base creator Jesse Pollak is stepping back from leading the Base App after acknowledging he was “definitively wrong” in believing social experiences would be the primary driver of crypto adoption.

Base creator Jesse Pollak said he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a “wrong bet” on social features, a decision that left the blockchain trailing competitors in prediction markets and perpetual futures.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Pollak said he had believed creator tools, content platforms, and messaging apps would fuel crypto adoption, but instead the market “disintegrated completely.”

“We realized our strong focus on social had caused Base to lag in areas that had become increasingly important. We had perps (shoutout Avantis!) and prediction markets (shoutout Limitless!), but both remained well behind larger, more established competitors,” Pollak said.

According to Dune Analytics, Base-native prediction market Limitless represented only 0.5% of total monthly notional volume across prediction markets in July. Meanwhile, perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) Avantis ranked 18th in reported 30-day notional trading volume, based on DefiLlama data.

Pollak’s remarks provide additional insight into Base’s strategic shift earlier this year. While the network initially emphasized social products such as Farcaster, Zora, and miniapps to bring crypto to “a billion people,” Pollak said Base will now prioritize financial applications, with a stronger focus on trading, payments, and AI agents.

Pollak added that he will hand leadership of the Base App back to Coinbase, where it will be overseen by Jordan Fish, better known on X as “Cobie,” while he shifts his full attention to developing the Base blockchain.

Coinbase CEO Admits Mistakes in Handling Content Coins#

Pollak’s comments came only days after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged that content coins “didn’t work,” a realization that prompted the company to shift its strategy earlier this year.

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

In February, Base discontinued its Creator Rewards program and its Farcaster-powered social feed as part of a broader strategic shift toward tradable digital assets.

Launched in July 2025, the Creator Rewards program aimed to transform Ethereum layer-2 Base into a more social ecosystem where user activity and engagement could generate earnings. At the same time, Pollak acknowledged that the Base App had been an “imperfect Farcaster client.”

Base Advances Stablecoin and AI Agent Development#

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

In May, Base introduced Base MCP (Model Context Protocol), a tool that allows users to manage their crypto directly through an AI model’s chat interface and interact with protocols including Morpho, Moonwell, Uniswap, Aerodrome, Avantis, Bankr, and Virtuals.

In April, Base announced upgrades to its core infrastructure as part of its 2026 roadmap to prepare for an AI agent-driven economy. The network identified real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, stablecoins, and prediction markets as its primary growth priorities for 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.