Source: Unchained. Distilled and processed for Signal; not original content.
TL;DR
Jesse Pollak, Base’s creator, publicly reversed his multiyear bet that crypto’s next wave would run on onchain social (creators, content, creator coins). His verdict: right on builders, wrong on social. That corner “disintegrated completely,” leaving Base behind in perps, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. Base refocuses as “the blockchain for global finance,” betting “better money” alone can bring the next billion onchain. He handed the consumer app to Cobie; his 2026 priorities are trading, payments, and agents.
The durable lesson
- Financial primitives, not social apps, are crypto’s adoption wedge. Stablecoins, prediction markets, perps, and tokenization are where usage went; onchain social (Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, creator coins) did not deliver the wave.
- Builders were the right bet; consumer-social was not. Separate the two: infrastructure and developer pull compounded, content-coin speculation did not.
- Watch as validation: growth in stablecoins, prediction markets, perps, tokenization, and payments, with agents as a 2026 vector.
Key quotes
imo we made the right bet on builders, but obviously the wrong bet on social
hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i’m sorry!
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