Coinbase's Jesse Pollak explains what investors are missing onchain with Base
There is no arguing against the fact it's been an absolutely massive year for the leading Ethereum Layer-2 in Base.
Whether its Base onchain active addresses, which have surged more than 1,300% this year, or total value locked, which has come to surpass all other Layer-2s in just months since launching at the end of 2023 — by any metric it's been an incredible year. But what comes next, how does the project fit into Coinbase's broader goals, and can the project shrug off concerns of being too closely linked with the exchange?
Base's first builder and new Coinbase executive team member Jesse Pollak joined Coinage exclusively to discuss what comes next in the project's roadmap and how it stands to benefit the publicly traded company.
From its launch, Base’s mission was clear: enable builders, creators, and users to thrive in a global onchain economy. Pollak highlighted Base's meteoric rise, noting, "We’re leaving the year as the largest L2 in the world... rapidly emerging as the best place for developers to build on-chain." The platform’s ethos of enabling builders first has fueled a network effect: more apps, more users, and a faster-growing ecosystem.
That “builders first” mantra has permeated Base’s culture. "We are giving developers the tools to build great apps," Pollak emphasized, pointing to initiatives like Base Names, smart wallets, and OnchainKit, which simplify app development and remove barriers like gas fees.
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Pollak also spotlighted Base’s growing role in real-world applications, particularly in stablecoin payments. After witnessing adoption in regions like Argentina, he sees on-chain stablecoin payments as inevitable. "The fastest, cheapest, easiest way to get paid or pay someone is onchain," he said.
Now, as more customers use Base, Coinbase is reaping the rewards. The company — as of now — runs the chain's only sequencer, which means it stands to gain as more people use it and need transactions settled. While the number of transactions on Base rose 55% quarter-over-quarter, according to Coinbase, technical upgrades actually meant fees fell (median fees in Q3 were less than $0.01).
"We believe that more developers will choose to build their products on Base as the cost to transact becomes lower," Coinbase said in their third-quarter investor letter. And while that may be the case, they might not even need to rely on more builders taking Base to the next level. Coinbase may very well be able to do that themselves, simply by moving customer assets to Base instead of Bitcoin or Ethereum. The company already runs wrapped assets on both, after launching cb.BTC earlier this year.
"I expect that we will see many, many more assets coming onchain onto Base and I expect that Coinbase is going to continue to replatform significant parts of the business onchain on Base because like, that's the future because it's going to be faster, cheaper and easier, and it's going to be easier to build experiences that everyone, everywhere can use."
As of the beginning of December, Base had close to $4 billion in total value locked on the chain. Customer assets safeguarded by Coinbase broke $330 billion earlier this year. There is a case to be made that the FTX debacle proves storing user balances onchain might in theory be better for everyone.
"This is the Ethereum strategy. It's scaling via rollups and Base has brought billions of dollars into the onchain economy on Ethereum," he said, adding that if it becomes so cheap and easy to use that Coinbase has no choice but to move user assets to Base — that would be a win for both.
