Base to Prioritize Creators Over Traders, Says Architect Jesse Pollak

Coinbase’s Layer 2 network Base’s creator, Jesse Pollak, has defended the platform’s focus on creators, following backlash over an experimental content token drop. 

“If you are a creator or developer and you want to be the #1 priority, we would love to have you on Base,” Pollak tweeted Monday.

Pollak was responding to Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen’s criticism, who tweeted Monday, “traders are easily the most important user group in crypto,” not creators or developers. 

“I love traders, but our north star is helping creators and developers build their dreams—everything else is downstream of that,” the Base creator said in rebuttal.

The back-and-forth rekindled tensions over Base’s recent onchain campaign, which saw a post from its official X account automatically minted into a token through Zora, triggering a frenzy that sent its market cap to $16.9 million, before crashing by 92% within hours.

Though Base confirmed to Decrypt last week that it never sold the tokens—labeling them unofficial—critics, such as Cohen, have already called the rollout irresponsible.

In his latest rebuttal, Cohen argued that creative projects don’t survive without trader demand. “If traders don’t see value, creators and devs don’t eat and go elsewhere,” he said.

Pollak pushed back, saying “trading is downstream of creativity,” with volume and growth following suit, adding that his main priority is growing creators and creativity onchain. 

“Everything else will take care of itself,” he said.

“Happy to [circle back]—I’ll still be focused on creators and developers,” Pollak told Cohen, who suggested they revisit the debate in a month.

Since the token mint, Pollak has maintained that the bigger mission is building a “global on-chain economy” that prioritizes ownership and creativity over speculation.

Tensions escalated further after Zora, the protocol used in the mint, announced Monday it would launch its own token this week.

Community members, such as Phin Totten, the marketing lead at Ethereum L2 Abstract, pointed to the timing, with some suggesting Base’s “coin everything” push may have amplified snapshot activity ahead of Zora’s airdrop.

Jesse Pollak denied coordinating with Zora on its April 23 token launch, saying the Base minting campaign “went 0 to 1 in a day” and Zora “didn’t know until after it happened.”

A far cry from its peak, the auto-minted token is now down 25% on the day, holding a $5 million valuation at $0.0057, according to DexScreener data.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair