Coinbase shifts Base app away from social crypto plan

Coinbase is changing course on Base after the executive who leads the project acknowledged that its push into crypto-based social media did not work. The retreat matters because Base had been pitched as a way for Coinbase to build a broad decentralized trading and social platform, while rivals and newer crypto firms press into finance-focused products.

Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive behind Base, said in a post on X that the company erred by trying to make the Base app a social forum built around “creator coins” linked to users’ posts, according to Fortune. The idea was to create a crypto-native alternative to established social platforms, but Fortune reported that users showed little appetite for replacing services such as X and Instagram with that model.

Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts reported that the Base plan also drew frustration from users and developers who believed Coinbase favored people and projects close to its own network. That perception, Roberts wrote, helped some participants profit while others felt disadvantaged.

Pollak also addressed the tension of developing decentralized infrastructure inside Coinbase, a publicly traded company. In his X post, he said it is difficult to “build a decentralized blockchain inside of a big centralized public company,” Fortune reported.

That tension has followed Coinbase as Chief Executive Brian Armstrong has continued to back crypto’s long-term promise while also answering to shareholders and quarterly earnings demands, according to Fortune. Roberts argued that those corporate pressures gave a project such as Base limited room to miss targets or drift from commercial priorities.

Coinbase and Base have not abandoned the effort. Fortune reported that the project produced X402, an open-source protocol tied to agentic commerce that is gaining attention in the industry and could give Coinbase a useful position in AI-related payments.

Armstrong has also suggested that the Base app could help Coinbase expand into overseas markets with lighter regulation, according to Fortune. The company has moved Pollak into a lower-profile role focused on developing the Base blockchain itself.

Coinbase has hired Jordan Fish, widely known in crypto as Cobie, to run the Base app, Fortune reported. Under Fish, the app is now focused entirely on finance rather than a social-media strategy centered on creator tokens.

The shift comes as Fortune described a broader change in crypto away from token speculation and toward products tied to trading, tokenized assets and financial infrastructure. Roberts cited firms such as Hyperliquid and Robinhood as examples of competitors gaining ground while Coinbase adjusts its Base strategy.

Fortune reported that Base’s early vision has left Coinbase trying to catch up in parts of the market where crypto products are becoming more closely tied to conventional finance. The company’s next test is whether the reworked Base app and blockchain work can serve that demand better than its social-token experiment did.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.