Jesse Pollak: Base Prioritizes Creators, Not Traders – Tensions Escalate After ‘Content’ Token Crash
Amid mounting criticism following the collapse of an experimental content token, Jesse Pollak – the man behind Coinbase’s Layer 2 network Base – has stressed that his platform prioritizes creators and developers, not traders.
“Base’s north star is to support creators and developers in realizing their dreams – everything else comes later,” Pollak wrote on X earlier this week.
His comments were in response to an argument from Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen, who claimed that “traders are clearly the most important user base in crypto,” not developers or artists.
Tensions between the two views escalated following a controversial incident last week, when Base’s official X account posted content that was then automatically minted into tokens via the Zora platform. The “Base for Everyone” token quickly soared to a market cap of nearly $17 million before plummeting 92% in just a few hours.
Although Base clarified that it was not an official token, backlash was widespread in the community – many, including Cohen, found the launch irresponsible and misleading. “Without traders, creators would not exist,” Cohen argued, emphasizing the central role of the marketplace in sustaining the ecosystem.
However, Pollak disagreed, arguing that the flow of innovation is where value is created on-chain. “Trading comes after creation,” he added, affirming that Base will continue to focus on building an on-chain economy for creators.
The conflict was further escalated when Zora — the platform that has been used to mint content tokens — announced it would launch its own token on April 23. Some community members, like Phin Totten of Ethereum L2 Abstract, suspected that the recent “spontaneous” token minting could be a move to prepare for a Zora airdrop, which would boost engagement and trading.
Pollak has completely denied any coordination with Zora, saying the campaign “went from zero to one in a day” and that Zora “didn’t know until it happened.”
Currently, the content token minted through Zora has dropped another 25% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of around $5 million, trading at around $0.0057, according to data from DexScreener.
While the debate over the central role of the crypto world – between creators and traders – is far from over, Pollak insists his stance has not changed.
“Nice to be back – I’m still going to focus on creators and developers,” he said, responding to Cohen’s suggestion to “meet in a month” to see which side is right.