Jesse Pollak

On February 23, 2023, Coinbase announced the testnet launch of Base, an Ethereum layer-2 network. Base was incubated inside Coinbase and built on Optimism’s OP Stack, with plans to progressively decentralize and no plans to issue a new network token; its goal was to make onchain the next online and onboard one billion users into the cryptoeconomy. On July 13 of that year, after completing its launch criteria, the Base mainnet first opened to builders.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][2]

On August 9, 2023, Pollak published a signed post announcing that the Base mainnet was live and available for everyone, with more than 100 dapps and service providers in the ecosystem at launch and deep integrations across Coinbase’s products. He wrote that Base’s vision was to bring the next million builders and billion users onchain, accelerating a decentralized financial system that would increase economic freedom around the world.⁠[3][3][3]

On October 7, 2026, Pollak spoke at the TOKEN2049 Singapore conference as the creator and head of Base and gave an interview to The Block there. He said the coming tokenization “supercycle” would be led by tokenized stocks and non-dollar stablecoins: “Next is U.S. stocks and global stocks. The dollar has already done it.” If he had to pick one more, he would choose currencies other than the dollar, adding that people are underestimating it. He said demand for dollars would remain strong, but countries would keep using their own currencies and people would still spend in their local currencies, so the onchain economy would need money to match.⁠[4][5][6][6][6][4]

At the time, Base supported 32 stablecoins linked to 21 currencies, including the euro, the Canadian dollar, the Nigerian naira, and the Indonesian rupiah; more than 99% of stablecoin supply was still pegged to the dollar, but he expected local-currency stablecoins to see greater adoption in payments. On August 24, 2026, tokenized stocks issued by Coinbase on the B20 standard went live on Base, with real shares held 1:1 by a regulated custodian. Pollak said in the interview that tokenized stocks on Base were generating $70 million to $100 million in daily trading volume, with 50 stocks listed and plans to reach 250 by the end of the month, and stressed that tokenized stocks can trade around the clock, be sold immediately, and be sent to anyone. He also pointed to borrowing stablecoins against tokenized stock portfolios, targeting a loan-to-value ratio of about 30% to 40%.⁠[6][5][7][7][5][6][4]

Pollak said Base had shifted from being a general-purpose blockchain to focusing on three areas: trading, payments, and finance. In trading, it aims to simplify interfaces and APIs and improve the performance of decentralized exchanges; in payments, it is working with Cloudflare to build infrastructure for automated machine-to-machine payments capable of processing one million transactions per second. He said that over the next one to two years all finance would move around AI agents, and that he wants Base to be that stage. On the announced shutdowns of Blast and Abstract, he argued that layer-2 networks need differentiated products and a distribution strategy, and that not every project can become a sustainable business.⁠[6][5][5][6][6][5]

Base: Official website: https://www.base.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]