i def respect the frustration expressed here and elsewhere by people I often align with
I just don't really understand what people are asking base to *do*
or maybe it would be more acccurate to say I simply disagree with the consensus that Base generally decides outcomes on the chain via their overall strategy & their team's interactions with projects
ex: when I came up on Base it was entirely due to my work on Farcaster (I had 0 followers, was at that time not doxxed and so was an unknown entity with zero public experience building in crypto). Base's strategy in 2024 prioritized Farcaster in a super significant way: when they announced the redevelopment of their somewhat failed mobile wallet into a new wallet app - the Base App - the initial vision was a new kind of social, mobile app combining the Farcaster network & token trading at its core. Most devs on FC were building miniapps or infra for the protocol / dev tooling for ppl building in the eco. Base supported and prioritized both via grants and promotion.
my initial rise in followers came from building on
@withfabricxyz which at the time was developing a subscription token protocol and a primary app on top of it called hypersub. think subscriptions for writers, founders, gated communities. I built an "open venture studio" and initially sought to encourage the development of apps/ideas generally - multiple members were developing their own apps and I sought to help them bring ideas to life. additionally, I developed an app with collaborters from the studio (uniswap fork on degen l3) and forged deep ties with a group called Farcaster Builders of India. FBI was a loose network of indian devs who worked indiividually and collaboratively focusing mostly on FC / Base projects. I hired a dev studio led by members of FBI, and collab'd a bunch with Saumya (FBI founder) as well as Degen DAO, which was essentially a
@prtyDAO instance created after a crew of degen-rich airdrop receivers funded a party with their
$DEGEN and worked together to use the funds to encourage the growth of the Degen Eco. Degen provided funding, FBI provided devs / coordination, and Proxy Studio provided founders and ideas. we built stuff. FBI was funded in large part by Base and also earned via dev work. Other key hubs in our network were Jacek & the Degen project, and Deployer who at the time was building Ham ($TN100x and Ham Chain), and the Higher crew of guys like Zinger, Six, Jihad, Martin . The network was honestly cracked and it was a super fun time. Ton of ambitious hardworking people.
why do i bring this up? its a great example of how Base did contribute to the development of a powerful eco that would later come to define a significant portion of the hot projects on Farcaster, and also on Base. Eventually, the FBI founder Saumya was basically brought in-house by Coinbase to run growth for Coinbase India. FC would go on to hire Six to run their launchpad's socials, Jihad would get a $100k deal from Base to define culture on the chain via writing. Deployer and I both got the white glove base ventures + listing + promo support for our later successful projects.... long story short base had a real impact cultivating our network.
but base wasn't really *picking* winners. it was providing slow, steady support for indiviiduals. Jesse's support for me personally had an impact that was real: he bought a subscription to Proxy Studio and we chatted occasionally via dm. i felt inspired and encouraged by him. Jesse and I interacted on the feed in public, and I interacted with members of the base team. Base did not fund my work, and when ( inquired directly about funding Jesse encouraged me to focus on earning revenue that would give me 2 years of runway. Good advise!
during the summer of 2024, FC and Base were both struggling. I launched a new product I called a "social dex" - paying a dev studio 10k/month via the funding I had accumulated from Hypersub and l3 dex protocol fees and the Degen DAO token deal we'd made. I think this went on for 6 months? an accomplishment I was proud of tbh but sadly the product was a failure, and suddenly I realized I had no hot product, and one month of runway left. Degen itself was struggling at the time, l3 use had fallen off entirely. Higher was struggling to find a more concrete pathway, sort of founderless in the best sense but also stuck without people willing to take on larger responsibility and leadership that makes a difference for so many projects.
FC's next breath of fresh air came from the AI meta. Martin had a Zora coin connected to his agent with an FC account that was really emblematic of this moment - it was the most exciting thing and the only thing that FC / Base sent higher in a while.
we all know what came next: I asked jack dishman if he'd help build out an idea I had and we spent 5 days working in person @ my mom's office and the day after trump's election dropped Clanker. a few months later deployer dropped Bankr. FC Eco was hot and far more importantly most of the ambitious founders in the eco had a real and direct path to ship a coin and secure some funding. given the absence of meaningful eco VC presence, this sort of generalized wealth effect that came out of that summer / fall was a big deal and shaped a huge amount of what would come next on FC and our corner of Base over the next 2 years.
and Base played a huge role! they encouraged so many of the founders who were part of this, they funded hackathons and other stuff. But Base also tried to pick winners in those next few years - most specifically they tried to pick Zora as the Base Launchpad and content coins as the Base Meta, and the Base App (with the Farcaster feed + Zora providing tokenization as the core integrations besides miniapps) as the, well, Meta App on Base.
All three choices were incorrect. Today X remains the Meta App most used on Base, Zora pivoted away from content coins and Base, and Base's strategy shifted back towards the "builder" culture they'd cultivated originally. Other choices and things that Base has pursued have panned out differently than you might expect: for ex. base put a lot behind aerodrome becoming the dominant venue for liquidity and trading on Base. aerodrome has been extremely successful in many ways, but its also true that Uniswap has been the venue where most of the base native builders have shipped their coins, and uniswap lp fees have provided sooooo much funding that has dramatically shaped the active culture here.
None of this is meant as a take down of the Base critics or of Base itself. its def not meant to be critical of any of the people or projects mentioned. Base took some big swings, and their support was meaningful to a lot of people (myself included).
but I strongly believe that Base will not make the decisions that determine the success or failure of the chain. base strategy should not limit how ambitious founders choose to approach winning around here.
because at the end of the day, its our agency that matters a lot more than any corporate strategy. we get to make the choices that matter most, not them
its us who shape the culture, not a handful of employees. the gap between the chain and community doesn't express simply a failure of the chain, it expresses the power of the community. if we want to see something different than whatever brian plans to offer next after he's done selling another yard of
$COIN, we should just ship it