@jacek
I’m genuinely disappointed by @base.base.eth 's forced push around creator coins.
Let’s rewind for a second. One of the fundamental reasons people build on Base is not because Base has some exponentially superior L2 technology that exists nowhere else. It doesn’t. People deploy on Base because it is backed by Coinbase, and that brand plus distribution is supposed to translate into attention and support for builders.
What’s frustrating is how tightly Base has aligned with @zora to the point where the language feels like “we/us,” while everyone else building on the chain gets sidelined.
In 2024, $DEGEN airdropped roughly $50M to Farcaster users on Base, ran to a $1B market cap, and helped catalyze an entire ecosystem that later became its own chain. In 2025, we broke a Guinness World Record, launched an app, and have consistently run community activations. Yet we still can’t even get the official Base X account to follow us, let alone acknowledge launches with a retweet or mention.
It’s also not just us. Plenty of other projects feel the same way: that if you’re not part of the favored narrative, you effectively don’t exist. At that point, what is the incentive to build on Base?
For contrast: when Degen launched a bridge to Solana, we immediately got support from Mert, the official @solana account, and others. It was night and day. It felt like we mattered.
On creator tokens specifically, I remember when Racer was pushing hard for Base support. FriendTech had a strong product and real organic momentum. The response felt like “he’s difficult to work with.” That’s a choice. You could have had a pump.fun-style creator product on Base from day one. Steve Aoki was already there. Instead, two years later, the messaging is Zora all day, every day, while other major Base-native projects still can’t get basic recognition. You can promote Zora constantly, but you can’t give $DEGEN or $TOSHI or any other meaningful community a mention, or acknowledge the Degen app launch? That’s disheartening and makes Base feel out of touch.
I even offered to run airdrop campaigns on Base or inside the Base app worth over $1M, and it got ignored.
And culturally, Solana shows up. At Solana events, they work with the community. The last Solana party I attended had them handing out Bonk keychains. That kind of small, tangible effort signals respect for the people building and participating. Why does Base struggle to do anything like that? Instead, the response often feels like “today’s a great day to build on Base,” while valid feedback gets waved away.
Also, who actually pioneered rewarding creators at scale? $DEGEN did. We distributed $50M to creators and users.
At times it feels like the Base team has a backwards view of what makes ecosystems win. They’re building for crypto natives right now, whether they admit it or not, and you don’t get to ignore crypto-native builders while claiming you’re onboarding a billion users to DeFi. You don’t get mass adoption by acting like distribution is a one-project strategy.
This is feedback because I want Base to succeed. But the current approach is alienating the very builders who helped make Base matter in the first place.