Jesse Pollak: Why Base Will Make Ethereum Win Long-Term (Consumer Grade Scale)

Transcript

And then it's also happening directly on base. Uh I said at the beginning, but um I think something like 90% of X402, which are kind of agentic HTTP transactions, are happening and being processed on base today. Um the things people and agents are buying are inference. Um they're buying data. Uh they're buying uh consumer goods and services. Um and that that's growing pretty consistently. >> Just like the streets of Manhattan, I'm going to keep this quick. Over 70% of our viewers are not subscribers. Yes, you. [music] Every week we interview some of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the financial industry. The easiest way to support our channel [music] is to hit the like and smash the subscribe button. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy today's show.

>> Jesse, man, it's good to see you again. Thanks for your uh thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Happy Thursday. >> Happy Thursday. >> Sensational. >> Sensational, indeed. It's a uh it's a pleasure to have you. Um I mean, base has been in the limelight, as always. It ebbs and it flows, and uh no no surprise here. Uh you look like you're somewhere sunny, blue sky. So, I hope everything is good in your world, and maybe you can just give us a little bit of a sense of how you're feeling in reaction to everything that has evolved on base. >> Yeah, I'm feeling fired up. I mean, I think what we've seen in the first half of this year is just that crypto is starting to kind of go high uh you know, vertical in terms of its adoption on

stable coins, on tokenization, on trading, on financing. Um and so, I'm heads down basically trying to figure out how to serve all of these customers that are coming online. I spent all day yesterday um in San Francisco with a bunch of customers, um just kind of hearing what they're solving with base, and it was pretty inspiring. Um you know, one in in particular customer that I talked to is integrating financing on base, our kind of borrow and lend markets, uh where they're doing uh crypto-backed loans for their customers, and also giving yield to to other customers. Um and they were saying, "Hey, we tried to do this with C5, uh and it was too expensive and too too Uh we tried to do it with our own internal systems and it was too

expensive and too much balance sheet capital and then we found base. And now we're rolling out a financing product that instant that has lower rates than anywhere else in the world uh and that is a like incredibly seamless consumer experience. And so that to me gets me so fired up and I think it's indicative of crypto really crossing the chasm where we now have it powering these use cases behind the scenes in a way that's going vertical. >> I absolutely love it. I mean I we are fired up here too and people are you know they're they're they're dropping like flies out there. They're going to AI, they're going here, they're going there but we're not going anywhere Jesse. We're we've been live every day for the last like 4 years uh and so we're we're not going anywhere. We're going to stick around. Um but there's a

ton that has been happening despite market conditions. One thing I want to ask you about is Robinhood and Robinhood chain because I'm curious. We've talked so much about Ethereum at large and when you see a new chain come on do you think like all right, we got to toughen up, you know, here's more competition or do you think this is more on chain activity? These there are more people that are going to come on chain. That ultimately means user activity, more user activity for base. What is your reaction to what's happening over there and how do you think it could complement or compete with what's happening on base?

>> Yeah, I mean the pie is is just growing. We're upgrading the whole global financial system and seeing other folks come in and say, "Hey, wow, what base has been doing for 2 and 1/2 years and you know, the billions of dollars of assets and billions of dollars of volume on base. That looks pretty good. Let's figure out how to contribute to that effort as well." That that gets me excited. Um I'm also someone who always loves a little bit of competition. I grew up playing um sports, played all the way through college as as a soccer player and you know, my attitude was always like I just want to be pushed to be the best I possibly can be. And I think base is the same uh and the builders on base are the same. And so um yeah, I think it's a sign of the times.

Every single financial institution in the world is going to bring their business to be powered by crypto rails because it's going to offer cheaper, faster, more global financial services that let them just offer better customer experiences to to their customers all around the world. And so we want base to be at the center of it. Base is at the center of it today. It's the place where 90% of agentic finance transactions on 402 or X402 are happening. It's the the second largest financing market in the world for borrow and lend and growing quicker than any other ecosystem. You know, every other ecosystem is actually down in terms of TVL since 2025. Base is up 35% and then the core of our trading

business is live and well where Bitcoin, Ethereum, they trade more on base than any other chain in the world from a spot perspective. And so those three products trading financing and payments are growing incredibly fast and that's what we're going to keep doubling down on. >> And and so with that in mind, and I mean first off kudos because you know, TVL is up, activity is up, haters can say what they want, but you can't argue with the facts and the numbers. And so you know, there there is real live activity happening on base today whereas there's a lot of theoretical things happening across the rest of the space. But I want to get a sense of how you're thinking about this as base moves forward because we've seen how there's kind of this barbell approach. We've seen RWAs on one

side, meme coins on the other side, these two wolves inside of us. You know, we've also seen on base specifically sort of the the you know, iterations through social tokens and creator coins and and all kinds of things like this. And and you know, the old adage is if you're everything, you're you know, to everyone, you're going to be nothing. So so where is base positioned? What is the unique differentiation? Where are you guys hyper focusing? What is the facet of the industry that base wants to dominate?

>> Yeah, I I think the way we think about success for base is becoming the internet exchange basically where every asset whether it's stocks or crypto majors or commodities or anything else that you can imagine including these long tail attention assets is traded where you can trade and exchange those assets in every form whether it's spot or perps or lending or borrowing you can you have the right market structure for you and it's serving as the back end to power financial services products from coinbase to new age wallets like phantom and fomo to brokerages that are starting to leverage this technology like eToro and and tons of others that are starting to come on chain and so that is the vision and I think that's what we're we're heading towards now. I think the

the the thing that's exciting to me about open blockchains is that you have space for the the long tail of builders and innovators to explore new markets including attention markets which are kind of like my catch all for meme coins creator coins content coins that are all basically taking the attention that we spend on culture and on creativity and on feeds and turning it into tokenized value that can be then be redistributed through the different constituents who created who consume it and who distribute it and so you have the space for that and then on the other side you have the space for literally every asset in the world that's off chain today to come on chain to benefit from 24/7 settlement global access and deeper liquidity and better technology primitives that can

then be built on top of it to offer different kinds of financial services and so base is going to be the exchange where all of that happens and we're actually going to be programmable exchange where then other people can layer on a bunch of pieces as well and so I I think it'll it's all going to happen on base >> And is the infrastructure and user experience is it generalizable enough is it flexible enough where you can build one piece of infrastructure you can build base and it can appeal to the most you know suited up institutional of RWA folks and it it can appeal to the, you know, degenerate attention traders.

>> Uh I think I think so. I I do think that it is a little bit of the two wolves. Like you you you need culture and you need seriousness. Um and that's the kind of spectrum of of, you know, conversation that we see on Crypto Twitter today. That said, I will say where Base is focused is on delivering long-term value. Um and so I think attention attention assets can be long-term valuable for the ecosystem. You know, I think you memes on Base that have been contributing and growing and onboarding people. Um I think you're seeing that creator coins, you know, with Ansem and others I I think are going to make a resurgence and be something that also happens. Um but I I think one thing where where where a lot less interested in is people who are just here to kind of short-term, you

know, uh make a quick buck and then leave. And so where we're most focused is how do we build systems and products and and build the infrastructure that can support trillions of dollars coming into this new economy and give access to billions of people all around to that value. Um so that they can have more economic freedom. And I think a big part of that is backing long-term builders who are, you know, coming through the ups and downs of the market and saying we're going to stay focused on delivering those products. And then also working with kind of upmarket customers that are, you know, neo brokerages and neo banks and um centralized exchanges who are upgrading their systems in order to offer better experiences to their customers. And so that long-term value

and the long-term builders, whether they're big companies or small companies, that's Base's primary focus. And I think it comes through in the quality of different teams that you see on Base. You know, Aerodrome is now one of the largest exchanges in the world. Virtuals and Banker um originated on Base, and of course they're going elsewhere, but um it's been awesome to see them kind of like thrive and grow and and explore there. Venice is, you know, the the probably the one of the biggest consumer apps um in crypto today. Um you know, they just said said to announced that they're doing something like $90 million in in annualized run rate. They've invented this thing called tokenized inference that now has all of these markets that people are pricing and then consuming inference all happening on base with a ton of programmable primitives that are

being built on top of it. And so that kind of innovation coming from builders who have been here and are going to keep being here through ups and downs, that's the thing that we care the most about and um, are going to be supporting the most. >> Yeah, there there's uh, some base lifers in the chat. Uh, big shout out to one arm bandit who uh, who's a big base fan here. And then we've got a question from the chat from uh, w- let's see. Uh, from uh, Greg who's asking if or excuse me, from Edward that is asking if uh, base is considering integrating a perps exchange like lighter.

>> Yeah, so um, we think one of the one of the places where there's definitely the most opportunity for growth on base is around perps. Um, we've we have uh, perps venues like Avantis um, that have been growing really nicely on base. Uh, but we think there's a lot more that we can do to kind of get that ecosystem growing even more quickly. And as we talk to traders um, and also as we talk to other kind of financial app builders, um, the lack of a scaled perps venue um, that is, you know, bringing billions of dollars of volume um, is is a missing piece that that would let them offer a better product to their customers, let them do a bunch of more kind of hedging uh, and and financial engineering uh, on base directly rather than having to go elsewhere and so as we're working

through the second half of this year, that's a big priority um, to make sure that we have perps alongside spot as a really liquid marketplace on base that can then kind of fill out that full financial services offering. >> Yeah, and and I do want to just get the biggest of pictures here because, you know, base is so expansive and you talked about attention markets and I think it does make sense when you when you really do think about it how, you know, there is an exchange and a culture that is able to tie these two together. You know, long-term attention, you want the liquidity in the culture sitting next to, you know, some of the largest amounts of liquidity on, you know, in the world, on the internet. And so, internet capital markets, internet finance, um, feels like a really good term because, ultimately, all the

capital is is wanting to move at the speed, and proximity to some of these markets makes a ton of sense, uh, in terms of signal, attention, and then also how that translates into, uh, capital markets as a whole. So, the last missing, maybe final piece here is AI, and I just want to get a sense of how you see AI integrating into, you know, the the two wolves, right? The third wolf being AI, the first and the second being the the attention markets and, uh, you know, more serious RWA products. How does AI fit in? >> Yeah, well, we're seeing AI totally change the way that we work on Base. I'm writing code now, uh, in between meetings and shipping products internally and externally, uh, in a way that I just like wasn't able to for 5 years, but as an engineer, I'm now just

like totally giddy about getting to be able to do that again. And then it's also happening directly on Base. Uh, I said at the beginning, but, um, I think something like 90% of X402, which are kind of agentic HTTP transactions, are happening and being processed on Base today. Um, the things people and agents are buying are inference, um, they're buying data, uh, they're buying, uh, consumer goods and services, um, and that that's growing pretty consistently. Um, where basically it's getting integrated to more harnesses, um, you have more suppliers, um, who are offering services. You know, lately we've seen, um, AWS turn it on for their web application firewall, so now any AWS customer can basically just enable monetization, um, directly in CloudFront. Uh, so as they have data and

and content that they want to be selling, that's currently being overrun by bots, they can turn that into actually a revenue stream. And so, I think that it's been cool to see that kind of primordial soup of AI plus crypto innovation start to develop on Base. I talked about tokenized inference earlier, uh, and I think all of it's going to come together over the next few years to basically make base a place where you have millions or billions of economic actors in the forms of agents who are doing payments, who are trading, who are accessing, you know, lines of credit and capital and are doing things that we maybe can't even comprehend right now as an industry. And so I think we're in day one of that transition and it's going to get a lot bigger in the years ahead.

>> Yeah. And you guys have assembled a fantastic team at base. Some more questions here. People are curious. They saw us some things with Kobe who recently joined the team but then his base tag on Twitter or something got revoked. Can you confirm or deny is Kobe still part of the the base team there at Coinbase? >> Yeah, I just walked I just walked out of a call with Jordan with Kobe who was, you know, weighing in on base, where we're going, how we succeed and win. Him and I have gotten to work really closely over the last year.

I was a core part of kind of championing him joining in the first place and the big reason why I was I I've just found him to be an incredibly incisive and visionary leader and so it's been awesome to get to have him weighing in on base and helping us build base into the best possible thing it can be. >> That's fantastic. And and do you just out of my own curiosity, do you find your you guys kind of agreeing on most things as far as the direction of base? Maybe you can just give us a sense of, you know, what what are some commonalities and then are there any areas given that both of you guys are OGs, are there areas where you disagree on on, you know, the path forward?

>> I think one of the things that I love most about working with Kobe is that he's just incredibly direct and we get to have really like clear conversations about where we think we're going. One of the places where he's influenced me and I I think influenced base is on the trading side. I'm historically like I haven't been a trader. I've been much more of an investor, Um, know, like buy and hold. And Kobe is someone who I think kind of grew up trading in the trenches of crypto for the last decade. And so, that's helped him, um, I think really be a really strong voice for me of that trader as I'm starting to spend time with a lot more customers. And so, as we're thinking about perps, um, as we're thinking about growing our spot markets, as we're thinking about attention assets, um, I think he's been,

uh, just like a really powerful perspective to make sure that we are, um, prioritizing the foundations, the products that serve traders, um, to make sure they're getting a best-in-class experience on Base. And so, I'd say that's a that's a place where he's he's really influenced me. I'd say, you know, one of the places where me and him have a lot of commonality is just, you know, our perspective on the long term. Um, we've both now been here building for a decade plus. And, uh, I think both of us feel like there's there going to be at times be so much noise. And really the thing that matters is putting our heads down and and trying to change the world.

Um, and the way we do that is by upgrading the financial system, which is going to let us increase economic freedom globally. And so, um, that mission and then just the relentless forward progress attitude of we're going to show up every single day. Um, you know he's uh you know, sometimes showing up in the middle of the night. I'm sometimes showing up in the middle of the night cuz we're in different time zones at various times. And we're just going to show up for each other and and for for Base and for Coinbase and for crypto, um, because we believe that crypto is, uh, incredibly powerful tool for freedom. Uh, and that hard work is going to what is going to be what brings it to the to to millions of people billions of people all around the world.

>> I mean, I think it's a it's an extremely virtuous, you know, and noble effort increasing economic freedom globally. I think is is something that, you know, is true to the ethos of of and philosophy of this industry as a whole. It it's where we've been and and it's indicative of you guys being in the space so long. But, many who have been in the space so long have kind kind their way. And and, you know, sometimes forget some of the original ethos. Banking the unbanked is kind of the one that, you know, comes to mind, but obviously that has gone through iterations itself. Uh in uh economic freedom globally, I think it's huge. A piece of that is, you know, economic freedom here in the US, and and I'd be remiss not to ask you about Clarity Act.

It's the Clarity week, it's a big week. Uh I think prediction markets have this at like 15 to 18% these days, but actually uh we had Haseeb on just before you, and he mentioned that Kolachi has a prediction market about uh it going to 2027, 2028. It's actually increased odds of happening later uh in later years. How important is it to get Clarity Act through? I mean, another co-worker of yours is Brian Armstrong, he's just been relentlessly in DC trying to help this thing move forward. Maybe, you know, you can give us some insights into discussions you've had with Brian and his experience in DC, and also your perspective on the relevancy of Clarity Act.

>> I mean, I think as we talk to builders, one of the the most pernicious realities of the last decade has been that um it's just way too hard to build in crypto in the United States. And that means that builders are spending more money on lawyers than they are on engineering and product. Uh and that's that's kind of like an untenable reality for uh being the place where this innovation happens in the future. And so, I think from an importance perspective, it's super important. We need clear rules for entrepreneurs in the United States to innovate with the most important technology for financial freedom that we've ever had as a world. And so, I am like 100% uh behind that, and I think that uh that's not just me, I think it's it's Americans around the world who are

getting behind it. Um you have an increasingly loud uh set of constituents uh from Stand With Crypto to just everyday people who hold crypto uh that want to see the benefits of it um be more widely adopted, and Clarity can provide that. In terms of kind of where Clarity is right now, I think one of the things that's been most exciting for me is just the bipartisan nature of it. You've had, you know, as it passed out of the committees, bipartisan support, which I think has has made the bill better. I think as we're in the kind of final negotiations, there's people sitting down from both sides of the aisle to to get this bill done. And I'm seeing just a lot of energy and support for for making it happen. And so, I'm optimistic. You know, it's it's always a little bit of a

you know, work in progress as you're trying to get through a major piece of legislation through through both both chambers of Congress, but we have the best people in the world working on it from both sides of the aisle, from companies and individuals like Coinbase and others who are flying into DC, who are putting in the nights and weekends. And I'm optimistic that it'll get done. >> Yeah, this industry has been relentless. I from from your perspective, I'm just curious one follow-up there is that, you know, mission of improving economic freedom globally, this Clarity Act has kind of been touted as like opening the institutional floodgates, institutional being the keyword there. And a big part of, you know, the mission at base and your mission personally, opening up economic

freedom, how do you square that, you know, opening up the institutional floodgates? Is that really what Clarity's about? And and if so, how does that help achieve the mission of improving economic freedom all over the world? >> Yeah, well, I think what we saw with the Genius Act, which was the stablecoin bill that passed about a year and a half, was that it created certainty around stablecoins for businesses in the United States and beyond to more aggressively embrace them. And I think that that's led to or been one of the contributing factors behind this real inflection that we've seen where you just have really really dramatic growth happening month over month, quarter over quarter on stablecoins. And I think that Clarity has the potential to do the same thing for the rest of the crypto ecosystem where it really creates that regulatory

framework for tokens, for protocols. It protects developers um, and really makes it so that businesses of all kinds can more, um, uh, seriously, I think, lean in. Um, and some of that's going to be, uh, like, literally, the law is changing. But, I think some of it's also just, um, like, a message from the United States government that says, like, we're here to support this innovation, which then kind of ripples through boardrooms and and CEO conversations and lower-level employees to all the way to the people on the ground who who figure out, "Okay, how do we take this technology and make it something that can transform our business from payments to trading to to agents to to whatever it is." And so, I'd say, um,

you know, I I'm optimistic that Clarity is going to pass and that it's going to lead to a bunch more adoption, uh, in in businesses, and then that adoption's actually going to contribute to this increase in economic freedom. Um, because, like we've seen with stablecoins, the more people that support stablecoins, the more opportunities and and and products are available to people who are using stablecoins. And today, I think there's something like 500 million people around the world who hold stablecoins. And so, if we can just keep giving them things to do with that, that's going to lead to more access to credit, um, more access to equities of all kinds from all markets, um, easier payments that are faster and cheaper, so you're not paying $40 or whatever it is to send a remittance to your family in a different

country. Um, and I'm just like so so bullish on, uh, that leading to more economic freedom. And look, if if if something happens with Clarity, it's not going to stop. Like, it it will be an accelerate, but this is inevitable. Just like the internet, uh, crypto is a technology that is out of Pandora's Box, where it is freedom technology for money that lets us take legacy systems that are 50 years old or 100 years old, sometimes, and turn them into modern software defined decentralized systems that give more people access, make our money more efficient, uh, and make it so that the products that we use and sometimes

hate today just work a lot better. And so when you have a technology that that's that's that powerful, and you have a technology that really can transform the consumer and business realities as as people use money, we could not have clarity for for years, and it will still lead to the transformation that all of us are working towards. And so I'm I'm bullish on passing clarity. I think we're going to do it. I I think it will lead to this wave of adoption, and this technology is going to lead to adoption regardless. >> I I love everything you're saying, Jesse. I think it makes a ton of sense, and I love how it all ties into the bigger picture. I I realize we're probably tight on time, but I I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you one one last thing, which is

we were in Vermont for Basecamp. This was a little while ago, maybe last year, I think, around this time. And you announced that there would be a base token. And I just I'd love an update on on like are we going to see it sometime soon? What's the status? Are we still going to have a base token? Just anything you can share on this regard would be would be awesome. >> Yeah, well, you know, last September we announced that we were starting to explore a token, which was a shift from where we were previously. We were basically for the first 2 and 1/2 years we we said we're not even going to think about this. We just want to focus on building a product. And so we shifted that perspective, and we always build in the open, so we wanted to communicate to folks we're starting to explore. You

know, obviously when you have a big scale network like Base, and you're doing inside of a big public company, when we explore things we do it super intentionally. And so I don't have an immediate update to share right now, but I will say that our goal with Base from the beginning has to been to be a decentralized global network. We want to build the blockchain for global finance that businesses and consumers and everyday people can use regardless of where they're from, regardless of where they're born, regardless of what phone they have, from every country in the world. And the only way you can do that is through decentralization. And so, um we're heads down focused on delivering that alongside making sure that the product that we have across trading, payments, financing, um agents is delivering value to our customers big

and small. And um as we have more updates, we'll share them. >> Beautiful. Jesse, we love you, man. You uh you rock. Uh the industry is behind you, and uh we are very excited for more great things coming out of Base. Thanks so much for coming on, man. >> Yeah, appreciate it. Have a great day. >> again soon.