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Base creator Jesse Pollak steps back as app lead, shifts focus to chain infrastructure

Base creator Jesse Pollak steps back as app lead, shifts focus to chain infrastructure

Base says its two-year bet on onchain social missed the mark and will refocus on trading, stablecoin payments and AI agents as Jordan Fish, known as Cobie, takes over the app within Coinbase.

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Fact Check
Jesse Pollak's own X thread (the primary source) explicitly confirms every element of the claim: he handed the Base app to the Coinbase 'mothership' with Cobie (Jordan Fish) taking over, refocused his attention on the chain/infrastructure, and set 2026 priorities as trading, payments, and agents. The Block and Crypto Times independently report identical details, including Cobie's real name Jordan Fish and his arrival via Coinbase's Echo acquisition.
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Summary

Base is accelerating its move away from onchain social products toward trading, stablecoin payments, tokenization and AI agents after creator Jesse Pollak said the network’s two-year bet on social apps was wrong. Pollak said the market around Farcaster, Zora, miniapps and creator coins had "disintegrated completely," leaving Base behind in perpetuals, prediction markets, tokenization and enterprise payments. He has handed the consumer Base app back to Coinbase, where Jordan Fish, known as Cobie, said he now leads trading products including the Coinbase app, Coinbase Pro and the Base app following Coinbase’s October 2025 acquisition of his fundraising platform Echo for about $375 million in cash and stock. The reset comes as competition intensifies with Robinhood Chain, another Ethereum Layer 2, which has gained traction in tokenized securities, memecoin trading and decentralized exchange volume.

Terms & Concepts
  • Ethereum Layer 2: A network built on top of Ethereum to handle transactions more cheaply or efficiently while relying on Ethereum's base layer.
  • tokenization: The process of representing assets or financial instruments as digital tokens on a blockchain.
  • AI agents: Software tools that perform tasks autonomously.