Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, candidly admits that the SocialFi experiments launched on Base App last year “weren't really effective,” in a recent podcast episode hosted by David Senra.
“Based on how it was at the time, I don’t think it met expectations,” Armstrong said. “We saw it as an experiment, and it wasn’t truly successful. Since then, the app has shifted focus, emphasizing trading more and becoming a self-custody version of the Coinbase app.”
In July 2025, Coinbase reintroduced the non-custodial wallet Coinbase Wallet under the name Base App, positioned as a “super app” integrating on-chain social networking, messaging, gaming, and trading features.
Jesse Pollak, head of Base at Coinbase, actively promoted the Creator Coin feature—allowing tokenization of posts and creator accounts. Users could double-tap posts to buy related tokens, directly transferring value to content creators.
“Initially, people saw this as a way to reward and show appreciation to creators,” Armstrong explained.
However, Coinbase later significantly scaled back SocialFi elements on Base App to refocus on trading. In January, Pollak publicly acknowledged that the app “was too social-oriented” and would shift toward a finance-centric user experience.
A month later, Base also removed the integrated social feed from Farcaster, shortly after the platform’s founding team sold the protocol.
Although some Creator Coins attracted short-term attention, almost no tokens maintained their value. For example, Nick Shirley—a video journalist known for exposing alleged fraud at childcare facilities in Minnesota—launched a prominent Creator Coin via Zora. The $thenickshirley token reached a market cap of $15 million after Armstrong promoted it, before plummeting sharply.
Armstrong said that toward the end of the SocialFi experiment on Base, “many posts reached values of thousands of dollars.”
“I believe SocialFi will eventually find a suitable model,” he stated, while admitting that the tokenomics structure is still “not fully refined” and that tokens need to have “long-term sustainability.”
Successes and Challenges
At its peak, Base became the most popular blockchain for token issuance, partly thanks to Zora’s content coin mechanism, which allowed nearly fee-less token deployment. Asset management firm Franklin Templeton also saw strong potential in Base’s SocialFi, especially after the wave of interest in FriendTech v2 in 2024—though this appeal has since waned significantly.
Not only Base faced difficulties with SocialFi. In January, Aave Labs spun off Lens Protocol into an independent entity. Meanwhile, Zora launched a new “attention markets” feature on Solana, enabling users to stake on social media trends.
In terms of infrastructure, Base’s protocol is undergoing major adjustments, replacing most of the OP Stack with custom components. The development team is reportedly considering issuing a native token for Base.
While acknowledging that SocialFi features on Base App have “divided opinions,” Armstrong said he values the lessons learned from this experiment. Coinbase’s co-founder revealed that the company runs internal funding programs similar to venture capital funds, where employees can propose ideas to receive funding—and sometimes generate profits beyond expectations.
One such idea was USDC—the second-largest stablecoin by market cap—which Armstrong initially voted against.
