Jesse Pollak is stepping back from leading the Base App, handing responsibility for the product back to Coinbase while shifting his full attention to growing Base as a blockchain for global finance.
"The first quarter of 2026 was a punch in the face," Pollak wrote.
He said his strategy rested on two assumptions: that developers would drive the next wave of crypto adoption and that growth would come through "new onchain-native social experiences."
"[In my opinion] we made the right bet on builders, but obviously the wrong bet on social," he wrote, noting that prediction markets, perpetuals, and stablecoins emerged as the strongest drivers of adoption instead.
Pollak took responsibility for the outcome.
"I was wrong,” he wrote. “Whether it was timing wrong…or fully wrong, only time will tell, but regardless, I was definitively wrong."
However, the focus on social networking, Pollack said, left Base behind competitors, and his focus now is on “bringing a billion people onchain just by making global finance actually work."
Pollak said he has handed leadership of the Base App back to Coinbase, where Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, will take over development of the product while he focuses on the Base blockchain.
“[Cobie] will be taking it from here to make it the best damn app for onchain you’ve ever seen, including expanding beyond the Base ecosystem in ways that [to be honest] I won’t love as the leader of Base,” he wrote.
