Base Restructures Product Strategy Around Trading, Payments, and AI

Base has restructured its product strategy from a focus on social and creator coins to prioritize trading, payments, stablecoins, and AI agents. This shift involves a change in leadership for the Base app's operations and a redirection of development and operational priorities towards financial functionalities. Jesse Pollak, the founder of Base, handed over the operations of the Base app to Jordan Fish on July 15. Pollak stated that he will concentrate on building the Base chain and 'global finance.' Base has aimed to integrate services that combine social, apps, chat, payments, and trading while revamping the Coinbase wallet into the Base app. Initially, the focus was on on-chain social and the creator economy. Pollak acknowledged that experiments with Farcaster, Zora, mini-apps, and creator coins did not achieve the expected level of adoption. This strategic shift is also reflected in Base's official strategy for 2026, which highlights the establishment of a global market, expansion of payments and stablecoins, and strengthening the builder ecosystem as core tasks. As of the 10th, Base's total deposits amounted to $46.22 billion, with a 24-hour decentralized exchange trading volume of $9.835 billion. Galaxy interpreted this restructuring as a de facto surrender of the creator coin strategy. Base's strategic transition leaves Korean users with the challenge of evaluating the scope of access by functionality.