How Jesse Pollak Is Mapping Out Base's Next Chapter After the App Pivot

**Jesse Pollak** (0:00)
When I think about trading and I think about building a trading product, there's nothing better than him to do that. And that's where the focus of the Base App has shifted over the last six months. You know, we made that pivot six months ago, but I think that he's the right person to carry it forward and really deliver that world class trading product that I think crypto Twitter wants to see and I think will deliver a huge amount of value for the customers who use it. And so that, I think, to both of us felt just like this natural partnership where I could double down on this blockchain for global finance, on continuing to work towards decentralization, on continuing to be the best place for developers and enterprises and scaled adopters to come on chain. And then he could focus in on that trading problem alongside kind of a new scope that he also took on across the Coinbase products for trading to make sure that they're building the best possible products there. And so I'm fired up about it. I don't think I would be feeling as fired up if I didn't trust Jordan to be such a good shepherd of this product that we've built. And I think we're going to see a lot of good things on both sides for the next year.

**Laura Shin** (1:00)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining us live stream. Before we dive in, we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. This episode is brought to you by Cape, America's privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium service you'd expect from any other carrier, but designed so your number, your location and your data actually stay yours. Get 33 percent off six months at cape.co.
Today's guest is Jesse Pollak, creator of Base. Welcome, Jesse.

**Jesse Pollak** (1:38)
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

**Laura Shin** (1:40)
Yeah. Excited to chat with you. You had a lot of big news this week, and it must have been challenging for you to share. You wrote a long tweet about how you felt a lot of what the Base App in particular had aimed to do and the social arena had failed. And that spending resources on that had resulted in Base falling behind in key areas such as perps, prediction markets, even tokenization and payments. So you announced you would be returning to focus primarily on Base and would hand the reins of the Base App over to Jordan Fish, aka, Cobie.
So first of all, I just want to say I have a lot of respect for you, for always being so transparent and putting yourself out there.
And especially because that can be tough when what you're attempting doesn't succeed. But I also detected a note of optimism and joy when you talked about putting your head down, building, writing code. So tell us how you're feeling right now.

**Jesse Pollak** (2:33)
Yeah, I am mostly feeling excited. I mean, as an entrepreneur, I feel like it's always a little scary to take big bets. And some of those bets won't work out. But when you have a bet that doesn't work out, putting it behind you and saying, okay, let's double down on what is working and lean to that and get fired up about that, I think it's just like a huge opportunity. And so that's exactly what I'm doing. And I think one of the things that maybe has gotten a little bit lost in the conversation about Base App is that base chain has been kind of behind the scenes cooking for the last two years.
It's now the biggest spot market in the world for crypto trading on chain. So Bitcoin, Ethereum, other assets trade more on base than any other chain.
It is one of the world's most important stablecoin settlement rails. It's leading in agentic finance and agentic payments. And so that for me is this energizing signal that crypto is starting to hit real product market hit. And me taking my energy and saying, hey, the bet on the app that we made last year didn't quite work out. Let's refocus on the chain and growing that while handing the app to Jordan, who's just a killer, and I think is going to absolutely crush the mandate of building an on-chain trading product. That just feels like a win, win, win, and I'm fired up to get back to work on it.

**Laura Shin** (3:52)
And I'm sure you've done so much reflecting on this, but I'm curious. So obviously, the numbers were showing that the social bet wasn't panning out. But why do you think it didn't work out?