Base is shifting its strategy after admitting that its onchain social push fell short, moving its focus back to financial use cases as competition in Layer2 intensifies.
On July 13, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly acknowledged for the first time that Base's creator-token experiment had failed while responding to criticism from the community. "We messed up, and it's time to move on," he said, adding that the team had already completed its strategic adjustment earlier this year.
Base puts finance back at the center
After Armstrong's remarks, Base creator Jesse Pollak published a long post reviewing the network's strategy over the past two years and laying out its next direction.
Pollak said Base had spent that period believing onchain social would become the key breakthrough for crypto mass adoption. The team put significant resources into the creator economy, content distribution and social applications, hoping products such as Farcaster, Zora and Miniapps could reproduce the viral growth patterns seen in the internet era.
That thesis broke down in the first quarter of 2026, according to Pollak. He said those social products were hit hard, related social tokens plunged, and the market instead turned toward prediction markets, perpetual contracts and stablecoins.
He also said Base's heavy commitment to social left the network behind rivals in several important areas, including trading depth, payment experience and asset tokenization, and that market confidence weakened for a period. In his view, the rapid growth of stablecoins, perpetuals, prediction markets and tokenized assets has shown that stronger financial products on their own can drive broader adoption.
Pollak said Base App would be handed back to Coinbase and that crypto commentator Cobie would take over product development, while he would focus fully on the underlying blockchain and push Base toward becoming a "global financial blockchain."
Under the updated strategy, Base will concentrate on three priorities:
- building a trading platform that covers tokenized stocks, meme coins and app tokens, among other asset classes;
- expanding the use of stablecoins for individuals and businesses globally;
- accelerating the development of AI agents, based on the view that crypto is a native currency for AI and computers and could support a large number of future economic actors.
On competition from traditional finance companies such as Robinhood and Stripe, Pollak said global financial infrastructure competition will become more intense, but open competition should help drive industry innovation. He added that Base will keep its open-ecosystem approach and continue investing in developers.
Robinhood Chain emerges as a direct threat
Base's public reset comes as Robinhood Chain is climbing quickly and taking Layer2 market share. The report describes it as Base's most direct new rival.
Data from Token Terminal showed that a little more than a week after mainnet launch, Robinhood Chain had already moved ahead of Base in daily active users and at one point widened the gap. As of July 15, Robinhood Chain recorded 308,000 daily active addresses, versus about 300,000 for Base. In transaction activity, Robinhood Chain also overtook Base, reaching 10.5 million daily transactions compared with Base's 8.4 million.
DeFiLlama data cited in the report showed Robinhood Chain's daily DEX volume has continued to rise since launch and has stayed above Base for multiple trading days.
The data suggests users, capital and trading activity are moving toward Robinhood Chain at speed.
The report argues that Robinhood Chain's main edge over other Layer2 networks lies in Robinhood's traditional finance resources and large user base. Robinhood has tens of millions of retail users and an established securities trading platform, allowing it to direct traditional finance users into an onchain ecosystem while holding a built-in advantage in user acquisition and traffic distribution. That also makes it easier to attract major crypto protocols.
By contrast, most Layer2 networks still rely mainly on crypto-native users and ecosystem projects for growth, leaving them more exposed to market cycles.
Another advantage mentioned in the report is Robinhood's compliance framework, brand credibility and experience dealing with regulators. Those factors, the article says, give it a stronger position in areas such as tokenized stocks and stablecoin payments, while also lowering the barrier for institutions and mainstream investors to move onchain. That mix of traditional finance resources and onchain infrastructure is becoming Robinhood Chain's moat.
Viewed from that angle, Robinhood Chain's rapid rise also points to a broader shift in Layer2 competition. As crypto and mainstream finance move closer together, the contest is increasingly about who can connect traditional finance and onchain markets first. The article presents Base's strategic reset as an active adjustment to that trend.
Base leans into community culture as Cobie steps in
The article also says Robinhood Chain's breakout has been helped by a fresh wave of meme activity, showing that community culture still matters as an entry point for users and a way to energize an ecosystem alongside financial infrastructure.
Pollak addressed that directly in his post. "Inside a large public company, trying to build a truly decentralized network is incredibly difficult. Base, and I personally, do love memes, and Brian Armstrong probably isn't ever going to go wild posting memes on the timeline. After 40, posting memes every day is probably illegal," he wrote.
The line captures Base's current tension. As a Layer2 network under Coinbase, it wants to embrace crypto-native communities, open experimentation and meme culture, but it also has to account for Coinbase's brand, compliance obligations and regulatory responsibilities as a public company.
On July 17, Brian Armstrong changed his X profile picture to a superhero-style image created by the Base community. Because the image matched the Base ecosystem meme coin BRIAN, the move quickly stirred community attention and briefly pushed BRIAN's market capitalization above $30 million.
The report says the more substantial product reset is falling to Cobie. Compared with Pollak's developer- and infrastructure-oriented perspective, Cobie has spent years in trading circles and crypto communities, with a deeper understanding of retail culture, trading demand and meme ecosystems, along with hands-on experience building multiple crypto products. Those are areas Base now wants to strengthen.
Coinbase and Cobie had already been working together
According to the article, the relationship between Coinbase and Cobie did not begin with this move. In October 2025, Coinbase acquired the NFT tied to Cobie's podcast Up Only for $25 million and restarted the show. It later acquired Echo, the onchain fundraising platform founded by Cobie, for $375 million.
Responding to his move to Coinbase, Cobie wrote: "I decided that instead of relaxing and doing nothing, I'd make my life extremely stressful and busy, so now I'm working on Coinbase trading products, including Coinbase App, Coinbase Pro and Base App."
He added that he found it hard to explain exactly why he took the job, but that the chance to build genuinely good products mattered more to him than taking it easy.
Cobie also wrote to the community: "If you want me to fix something, just tell me what's broken. If I haven't fixed it in a month, then you can yell at me."
Base's change in direction shows Layer2 competition entering a new stage. With Robinhood, Stripe and other traditional finance players moving onchain with users, distribution and compliance strengths, the market will decide how much time Base has to prove that its new path works.