Base Creator Jesse Pollak Denounced “Stigma” Attached to Creators Issuing Tokens

There’s a “stigma” attached to creators issuing tokens, said Jesse Pollak, the creator of the Coinbase-backed Layer 2, Base.

“I've uploaded a ton of pieces of content to Zora because I always like to be at the cutting edge, at the forefront and figuring out how do these tools actually work for creators? And my experience as a creator has been, there's been a lot of stigma,” Pollak said in an interview with The Defiant. “People have gotten attached to a notion of what coins are that's different than just the technology.”

Pollak said crypto market participants should understand coins as a technology that can be used for many different purposes, and not just to speculate on memecoins.

In the case of content attached to fungible ERC-20 tokens on Zora, Pollak said those tokens should be seen as so-called Content Coins, meant to provide creators with a way to monetize and own their content. On the buyer side, Content Coins provide a way for fans to collect those tokens as a way of expressing their support, while other might want to speculate on the potential for the value of those coins to increas,e as more people collect them.

Crypto Twitter Uproar

Pollak’s statements come after Base triggered a Crypto Twitter uproar when it issued two tokens on Zora, and promoted the tokens on its official X account.

In an Apr. 16 X post, Base posted an image with the words “Base is for everyone”. Under the post, Base promoted the link to a “Base is for everyone” token on Zora, an onchain social network that allows users to tokenize digital media.

The post seemingly triggered a buying spree as the token quickly surged to a market cap of over $17 million, before crashing by 95% shortly after, according to data from Dexscreener. The token then recovered, reaching an all-time high market cap of $20 million. Currently, it is trading at $0.006, and its market cap is $6 million, according to Dexscreener data.

According to an Apr. 17 X post from blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain, three wallets purchased a large allocation of the token before Base’s post and sold them shortly after, making a profit of approximately $666,000.

Many in the crypto community criticized Base for promoting a token they thought was either the official Base token or a memecoin, and that ultimately crashed.

One user with the username “@web3adam” said in an Apr. 17 X post that the token launch was a “dumpster fire” and that he “feels bad for anyone building on base because all this does is devalue and discredit the quality of basically everything on the chain.”

Mea Culpa

Pollak said that while he believes enough disclaimers were in place to signal that the tokens were Content Coins and not official Base tokens or memecoins, if he could do things again, he would have added more warnings. 

“Base probably could have done another tweet before we posted it that was like, we're going to do a bunch of content on chain. We're going to drop one and then we're going to drop another and then we're going to drop a fifth,” Pollak said. “That might have set a better expectation. And that's definitely a learning and that's on me.”

Base Responds

Four hours after promoting the “base is for everyone” token on X, Base put out another X post explaining their position. In the post, Base said that it only posted on Zora “because we believe everyone should bring their content onchain, and use the tools that make it possible.”

The platform also reiterated that it “will never sell these tokens, and ​​these are not official network tokens for Base, Coinbase, or any other related product.” To round things off, it said, “The content we share is creative, and we're going to keep bringing culture onchain.”

Pollak has shared the same sentiment on a series of X posts. In an Apr. 16 X post, Pollak said that “someone has to normalize putting all of our content onchain. and i'm not afraid for it to be us.”