Jesse Pollak is handing over leadership of the Base app to Jordan Fish after admitting his strategy for onchain social applications did not succeed.
Coinbase's Jesse Pollak announced on Wednesday that he is stepping back from leading the Base app to focus on the underlying blockchain. He acknowledged that his bet on onchain social experiences, including Farcaster and creator coins, had failed to drive adoption as expected.
"I was definitively wrong," Pollak wrote in a post on X. He said the focus left Base behind in areas such as trading, payments and tokenization.
Leadership of the app will return to Coinbase, where Jordan Fish, known as Cobie, will oversee development. Pollak said Fish will work to make the Base app the best for onchain use while expanding beyond the ecosystem.
Pollak will now prioritize positioning Base as infrastructure for global finance, with emphasis on trading, payments and AI agents. Fish founded Echo, which Coinbase acquired for $375 million last year.
