Jesse Pollak hands Base App back to Coinbase after social push stalls

Jesse Pollak is giving up day-to-day leadership of the Base App, a notable reset for one of Coinbase’s highest-profile crypto projects. For retail investors tracking Coinbase’s ecosystem, the move signals a shift away from social features and toward the parts of crypto that Pollak says are actually pulling in users: trading, payments and AI agents.

Pollak said in a post on X on Wednesday that he will remain focused on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain. A layer-2 network is a system built on top of Ethereum that aims to make transactions faster and cheaper while still connecting back to Ethereum’s broader infrastructure.

Base launched in 2023 as Coinbase’s blockchain network for Ethereum-based apps. In 2025, Coinbase expanded the project by turning Coinbase Wallet into the Base App, described as an “everything app” combining crypto trading, social networking, messaging, AI tools and ways for creators to make money.

Pollak says the social strategy missed

In his X post, Pollak said Base’s recent strategy rested on two main ideas: that developers would lead the next phase of crypto adoption, and that new social products built directly on blockchains would drive growth. “On-chain” refers to activity recorded on a blockchain rather than inside a company’s private database.

Pollak said he still believes the bet on developers was right, but said the bet on social was wrong. He pointed to prediction markets, perpetuals and stablecoins as stronger sources of adoption. Prediction markets let users trade contracts tied to future outcomes. Perpetuals are crypto derivatives that let traders bet on price moves without an expiration date. Stablecoins are tokens designed to track the value of assets such as the U.S. dollar.

Pollak said the social area that Base and others had been building around, including Farcaster, Zora, miniapps and creator coins, did not develop as expected. Creator coins are tokens connected to individual creators or communities.

He took responsibility for the outcome, writing that he was wrong, while leaving open whether the issue was timing or the overall thesis.

Coinbase retakes the app

Pollak said he has returned leadership of the Base App to Coinbase. Jordan Fish, widely known online as Cobie, will now lead development of the product, according to Pollak.

Pollak added that Fish will expand the app beyond the Base ecosystem in ways Pollak may not personally prefer as the person leading Base. That matters because an app tied too closely to one blockchain can limit where users go, while a broader app may support activity across more networks.

Pollak said his own focus is now on making Base a blockchain for global finance. He said the network’s priorities for the rest of 2026 will be trading, payments and AI agents. AI agents are software programs that can take actions for users, and Coinbase has been working on tools that let them trade crypto and make payments.

Pollak also said Base welcomes competition from Robinhood and Stripe. Both companies have been tied to blockchain-related finance projects, according to the materials cited by Decrypt, adding pressure on Coinbase’s Base network as larger financial and fintech players pursue faster, cheaper payment and trading infrastructure.

The reset leaves Base with a clearer message: less emphasis on crypto social networking, more emphasis on financial activity that users already understand. Pollak’s post frames the change as a correction after a strategy that did not bring the adoption he expected.

This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.