Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive who created and leads the Base blockchain, said he has handed the consumer Base app back to Coinbase, with pseudonymous trader Cobie taking over.
Pollak announced the move in a lengthy post on X and presented it as part of a retreat from a multiyear bet that crypto’s next wave would be driven by social apps.
In the post, he wrote: “i’ve handed the base app back to the coinbase mothership, where my now good friend @cobie will be taking it from here to make it the best damn app for onchain you’ve ever seen, including expanding beyond the base ecosystem in ways that tbh i won’t love as the leader of base.”
Cobie, a widely followed trader and podcaster, joined Coinbase after the company acquired his onchain fundraising platform Echo.
Pollak said his own focus is now on the chain itself rather than the app.
I Was Wrong on Social
Pollak said his 2024 and 2025 strategy was built on two bets: that builders would drive the next wave of adoption, and that growth would come from onchain social experiences such as creators, content and messaging.
He said the first bet proved right and the second, by his own telling, did not.
“imo we made the right bet on builders, but obviously the wrong bet on social,” he wrote.
According to Pollak, the social segment he had backed — including Farcaster, Zora, miniapps and creator coins — had “disintegrated completely,” leaving Base behind rivals in perpetuals, prediction markets, tokenization and payments.
He ended that section with an apology: “hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i’m sorry!”
Shift Toward Global Finance
Pollak said he now wants to build Base into the blockchain for global finance. In his view, better money on its own is enough to bring a billion people onchain, with stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetuals and tokenization carrying more weight than social apps.
He set three priorities for 2026: trading, payments and agents.
Pollak also said he welcomes new competition and specifically mentioned Robinhood and Stripe.
As described by Unchained, the change puts Cobie in charge of the Base app while Pollak narrows his attention to the chain layer itself.