Base Founder Jesse Pollak: Base Will Focus on Trading, Payments and AI Agents After Moving Away From Social Push Base founder Jesse Pollak said he was wrong to focus heavily on social products and content coins, acknowledging that the strategy caused Base to fall behind in areas such as perpetuals, prediction markets, tokenization and payments. Pollak said he has shifted his focus back to the Base blockchain, arguing that crypto adoption does not require social products and can instead be driven by financial applications such as stablecoins, prediction markets, perpetuals and tokenization. Pollak said the Base App has been handed back to Coinbase, with Cobie taking over its development, while he will focus on building Base into infrastructure for global finance. He outlined three priorities for 2026: expanding trading across assets including tokenized stocks and app coins, improving global stablecoin payments, and supporting AI agents using crypto-native payments.