Original post by CoinbaseDuck:
Base has been promoting Zora for over a year—but it hasn’t really led to meaningful user retention. Projects created by former Coinbase employees received more attention than the rest of the ecosystem—and it wasn’t worth it. Creator tokens were hyped even when their creators had a dubious track record—and users ended up suffering as a result.
Then came Balaji’s tokens, Jesse’s tokens, and others—promoted by the team itself, while countless people lost money. Could this have been avoided? Absolutely.
Now, it seems the entire focus has shifted to AI agents. They might bring some activity, but you can’t replace a vibrant community with them.
From the outside, it looks like Base is perpetually chasing the next trend instead of supporting the people and culture that already exist. Yet the chain is simple: memes brought in users, users brought in liquidity, and liquidity attracted builders.
Brian Armstrong’s response:
I agree with the first part, as well as with the point about content tokens. They didn’t work out, and we shut down that direction earlier this year. We messed up—we need to turn the page.
But I disagree about AI agents. Base’s priorities are trading, payments, and agents—exactly in that order. And all three are inextricably linked: payments require currency conversion (i.e., trading), and agents themselves will actively trade and make payments. By the way, most of our resources are currently going into trading. It might not be obvious from the outside yet, but that’s how it is.
