Emergency! Robinhood Chain launched ten days ago—could it overthrow Base? The co-founder has publicly admitted fault twice, and the leading position of the $ETH L2 is shaken. Should retail investors panic or buy in?

Have you heard? Robinhood Chain went live on the mainnet only about a dozen days ago, and its DEX trading volume surged straight into the top five. At one point, the number of daily trading orders even surpassed Base. Market analysts say when a strong competitor shows up, its shortcomings get magnified endlessly.

On July 21, Beijing time, in the afternoon, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak admitted via X that it was the right direction for Robinhood Chain to launch tokenized stocks in an EVM environment. Base has fallen behind in this area, but it is pushing related products with Coinbase. Base plans to launch tokenized stocks backed 1:1 by shares, rather than Robinhood’s derivatives model. This is Jesse’s second recent public admission of fault.

On the eve of Robinhood Chain’s mainnet launch, Jesse Pollak also publicly admitted that the social and creator tokens he had bet on for over a year were a strategic mistake. Those attempts around Farcaster, Zora, and content tokens did not bring sustainable adoption. The prices of the related tokens dropped sharply, and early builders’ enthusiasm cooled off accordingly. Pollak then handed back leadership of the Base App to Coinbase, with Cobie taking over, while he focused on the chain’s core infrastructure.

In the niche of public chains launched on exchanges, besides BNB Chain, Base has almost no peer. BNB Chain has years of accumulation, and that moat is not something Base can dig through in the short term. But facing L2s like OP Mainnet and Arbitrum, which also have several years of head start, Base is not falling behind—in fact, it has clear advantages in areas including meme tokens.

Perhaps it’s also because Base is backed by Coinbase’s influence: although Base has been surging hard, it lacks staying power. The problems buried during its nonstop run were magnified endlessly after Robinhood Chain launched. After Cobie took over Base App, he acknowledged that Coinbase and crypto native users are drifting further apart, and Base’s lack of progress on decentralization is a typical proof.

Base’s centralization issues have long been heavily criticized. Two block-production interruption events—one in August 2025 and another at the end of June 2026—clearly point to the problem caused by having a single sorter. The bigger issue, however, is that L2BEAT is preparing to downgrade Base’s decentralization level from Stage 1 back to Stage 0. L2BEAT’s criteria do not equate to security; Base has already shown that even if the security committee fails, users’ assets are still safe. But the main reason this matter has been raised again recently is: as a crypto-native exchange, for such a long time you haven’t built any meaningful advantages in decentralization—so how can you compete with Robinhood Chain?

Within just the first dozen-odd days after mainnet went live, Robinhood Chain’s DEX trading volume climbed into the top five, and the number of daily trading orders at one point surpassed Base. Before this, Base could still “coast” thanks to its own traffic and data, but when a formidable rival suddenly arrives at the gates, even “small issues” start to look unacceptable.

After Robinhood Chain launched, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev kept a close watch on updates from new projects. Meanwhile, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong recently led meme token BRAIN to fly by changing his profile picture, but then quickly switched back to his old avatar, causing BRAIN’s market cap to crash from $37 million to $2 million. The stark contrast between the two actions is striking. Although Brian Armstrong quickly responded on X to community feedback, saying his personal account is not an investment signal and he will not endorse specific tokens, it’s clear that people are not buying it. An unofficial Base Chinese community X account renamed itself to “Base is too awesome Chinese community” after the incident, and today it was changed again to “Base is not that good Chinese community,” with the mocking tone turned up to the max.

Of course, we can’t say Base is doing badly. Base still has the highest TVL among L2s, approaching $12 billion, and it also holds the power to set standards in machine payments. Armstrong has repeatedly emphasized that Base’s goal is long-term financial infrastructure, not chasing short-term hype. But the emergence of Robinhood Chain has indeed accelerated competition and forces Base to respond faster to users’ demands for reliability and support.

For Base, what’s most urgent now may not be responding to these gaps, but using the pressure to truly solve the technical and trust issues that have long existed. There are countless financial companies on Wall Street that can replicate Robinhood Chain’s path. In the RWA tokenization field, Base does not have a large enough advantage. If it doesn’t seize this opportunity to make changes, the situation will only become more passive.

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