A Critical Review of Base's 'Self-Criticism'

In the early hours of yesterday, Jesse Pollak, co-founder of Base, posted a lengthy tweet on X, reflecting on the successes and failures of Base's development strategy over the past two years.

This tweet is quite candid, both for himself and the public; admitting one's mistakes is not an easy task. Jesse believes that the decision to bet on the social domain, hoping that an on-chain native social experience would drive the mainstream adoption of Base and cryptocurrency, was a mistake. However, the other side of the bet, which is that application developers on Base would promote mainstream adoption by producing good applications, is correct.

Now, he has handed over the Base App (the super app of Base, not the Base chain) to Cobie to focus on developing the Base chain himself. From the perspective of an on-chain player, while I highly commend the honesty of Jesse's 'self-criticism', I also feel that there are aspects of his understanding that are debatable.

Betting on Social: 0 Points

The native on-chain social experience does not enhance the social experience for the public; it even complicates social interactions. In fact, I wish Jesse had analyzed in his 'self-criticism' what new social pleasures users could gain from the new social application Farcaster, what new forms of social content they could access, or what innovative paths for social network formation this application provides that would make him and the entire Base believe it could drive mainstream adoption by challenging traditional social media markets...

If this was aimed at the ideal of decentralized social interaction, it might score some points. But if he believes this could promote mainstream adoption, it can only be rated a pure 0.

Moving on, in terms of social aspects, Jesse also mentioned creator tokens and the recently popular $ANSEM on Solana. He expressed uncertainty about whether he was pushing Zora at the wrong time or if the idea of creator tokens was flawed from the start.

This understanding also scores 0 points. Firstly, the push for the concept of 'creator tokens' is quite strange. From the debate between Jesse and Toly back in the day, it was clear that Jesse believed 'content' has value, and creators as personal brands have value, so this is different from meme coins; it has fundamentals, and he wants to promote something with fundamentals.

But who can this logic convince? After all, Jesse himself led the issuance of a $JESSE token, and after nearly 240 days, the situation is as follows:

Content and personal IP do have value, but is issuing a token a unique monetization channel? What level of creators can you attract? How can you ensure that the value you emphasize has a reasonable logical chain? There are too many issues to resolve in between, but Base gives the impression that 'I've built the platform, and people will come'.

In this regard, Jesse's understanding completely falls short compared to Toly; at least Toly could say something like, 'Meme coins have no value, but in-game items and skins also have no value, yet people around the world are still willing to spend billions of dollars a year on worthless things.'

$ANSEM is also not the kind of 'creator token' that Jesse promotes; it is neither issued by Ansem nor created for monetizing personal IP, which is a situation that doesn't align at all.

In summary, Jesse, you were really wrong in the social aspect, but you haven't figured it out yet. In fact, the best reference sample for doing well in the Crypto + social area so far should be the social trading application FOMO.

Falling Behind in Perp DEX and Other Areas: 80 Points

Actually, the score could be even higher. In horizontal comparison, Solana has also not demonstrated significantly stronger competitiveness in the Perp DEX and prediction market areas compared to Hyperliquid and Polymarket; it is not much stronger than Base.

Jesse feels quite frustrated because, 'we overbet on social, and these two aspects did not keep up.' This is a bit too high of a standard for himself, after all, this is from a hindsight perspective. Hyperliquid is a competitor that has completely understood this track; it hasn't emerged, and Perp DEX is just like GMX and dYdX. As for the prediction market, Polymarket has a first-mover advantage, which is not a significant competitive failure.

Moreover, Base has been quite successful in AI, not only having a standout presence but also leading the on-chain narrative segment in the entire market. In terms of specific targets, there are significant targets like $vvv that have attracted the entire market's attention, and platforms like Virtuals that have launched on a large scale. The x402 protocol is leading in Agent payments while making USDC the stablecoin that occupies an absolute leading share in inter-Agent payments.

Base's success in AI narratives has also extended to some tech narratives related to AI; for example, in the robotics sector, there are many successful projects appearing on Base. In the RWA aspect, before Solana dominated on-chain US stock token spot trading with $SPCX, on-chain players would think of Base more, such as the $LFI project that previously dealt with property tax lien trading on-chain.

If Jesse has done poorly in this area, I actually think it goes back to the beginning of the article, where he mentioned that 'betting on application developers on Base would promote mainstream adoption through producing good applications.' In fact, Base's support for its own on-chain developers is not as good as he claims; from the perspective of on-chain players, when selecting targets on Base, it is crucial to see whether the project team can establish some relationship with the Base team; it has to be played within the 'circle'. The situation where a developer has a sudden inspiration and creates a hot project outside of the track that Base values and receives quick support from Base is really rare.

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