Jesse Pollak on ‘Base Is for Everyone’ + Guy Young and Carlos Domingo on Converge - Ep. 820
🎯 Summary
Podcast Summary: Jesse Pollak on ‘Base Is for Everyone’ + Guy Young and Carlos Domingo on Converge - Ep. 820
This episode of Unchained features a deep dive with Jesse Pollak, Head of Base and Coinbase Wallet, focusing on the controversy surrounding the “Base is for everyone” coin launch on Zora, and a subsequent discussion with Guy Young and Carlos Domingo about the Converge event.
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is on Base’s strategy for creator monetization and on-chain marketing using tokenization (specifically Zora Coins), contrasting this experimental approach with established crypto community norms. Secondary focus includes the broader implications of on-chain economic primitives and the future of decentralized social/creator economies.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Coins as a Primitive for Content Value: Pollak argues that “coins” (simple tokenization via Zora) are a powerful, technology-agnostic primitive for capturing the value of content, shifting economic power from platforms to creators.
- Evolution of Tokenization: The discussion traces the evolution from NFTs (requiring collections) to Coins (tokenizing single pieces of content), suggesting this simplification is key to mass adoption for creators.
- Integration of DEXs into Coinbase: A future vision for Coinbase involves integrating Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) directly, moving toward a “list everything” philosophy to grant customers access to the entire global economy.
3. Market/Investment Angle
- Creator Economy Shift: The core investment thesis is that tokenizing content allows creators to capture value (e.g., via trading fees or ownership) that Web2 platforms currently extract, creating a new positive-sum economic engine.
- Market Volatility as a Feature: The rapid pump and dump of the “Base is for everyone” coin is framed not as a failure or rug pull, but as a demonstration of a free market valuing ephemeral content, which is necessary chaos for learning.
- Challenging Existing Norms: Pollak explicitly rejects conforming to the “social standards” set by existing communities (like Pump.fun users) regarding token launches, arguing that boundary-pushing experimentation is necessary to onboard the next billion users.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Jesse Pollak (Base/Coinbase Wallet): Central figure defending Base’s experimental, on-chain marketing strategy.
- Zora: The platform facilitating the coin creation, which has shifted its focus entirely to coins over NFTs for content posting.
- Pump.fun: Mentioned in the context of its founder, Alan, criticizing Base’s launch for violating established “trench standards” for token launches.
- Coinbase: Reiterated its long-term goal to list all assets and integrate DEX functionality.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
- Insider Trading & Surveillance: Pollak provided absolute certainty that no Coinbase or Base employees were involved in the pre-launch trading of the token, highlighting Coinbase’s rigorous internal trading surveillance systems, which they use to report potential misconduct to regulators.
- Cultural Toxicity & Safety: Pollak stressed the need to create “psychological safety” on Base for experimentation, contrasting this with the “cultural toxicity” on Crypto Twitter that demands conformity.
6. Future Implications
The conversation suggests a future where tokenization becomes the default method for valuing and monetizing individual pieces of digital content, moving beyond the concept of long-term projects or aggregated memes. This requires working through the current cultural stigma associated with coins to achieve a truly open, creator-centric economy. The industry needs to embrace necessary chaos and experimentation to pave the way for mass adoption.
7. Target Audience
This episode is highly valuable for Web3 builders, product managers, marketing executives in crypto, ecosystem strategists, and investors interested in the intersection of social media, creator tools, and on-chain economics, particularly those focused on the Ethereum L2 ecosystem (Base).
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"Talking about Staked as an example, went from $500 million TVL in March last year when we launched with BlackRock to almost $6 billion now. So it's more like 10 times, not 10%, 10 times growth over one year."
"But then also your requirement for isolated block space, which is not one to wrap by the actions of other apps on the chain, is quite important because what you tend to see is that when demand for block space is the highest is when things are melting down, there's chaos, people getting liquidated, all these different pieces, gas spiking."
"When you are doing custody of digital assets, your risk is like 90% somebody stealing, loses the key. So if somebody hacks you, then you can lose all the assets. When you do custody of RWAs, you don't have zero risk obviously because something can go wrong, but your level up risk drops like to 10%."
"But stablecoins have a mechanism to freeze stablecoins in case it's needed. And for RWAs that represent securities, the smart contract that governs that, obviously with all the controls, has the ability to actually freeze the asset or even burn the asset."
"I just want to distinguish between digital assets that are better assets and RWAs that are not better assets because there is a confusion in the industry about it."
"I just want to clarify one thing in terms of KYC and personal identifier information, which maybe answers to some extent your question, is first, we do KYC on people as a financial institution. We are a broker-dealer and a transfer agent, but we never keep the personal identifiable information on-chain."