More than one person has wasted three years on Base.

Author: Eric, Foresight News

Original Title: Spending three years on Base, not just one person

Early morning of January 13, Beijing time, game studio Pandemic Labs co-founder and X user named tuna published an article criticizing Base’s inaction.

In the article, Tuna stated that Jesse’s concept of Base being “application-first” rather than focusing on infrastructure attracted him to develop products on Base. However, after developing 10 products including games, AI Agents, prediction markets, zkTLS, etc., over “3 years” (since the launch of the Base mainnet, which has been about two and a half years), the support promised by Base has never been fulfilled.

After launching the hit game Infected, which gained 50,000 followers in one month, Base proactively contacted tuna and promised support, but ultimately nothing came of it. Tuna said that before Infected, they tried to contact Base officials via X, Discord, and Telegram but received no response.

Feeling disillusioned, tuna turned to Solana and developed the game Addicted, which generated $4 million in revenue within 48 hours of launch on Solana. The stark contrast between two days earning $4 million and nearly three years of nothing made tuna lament that compared to Base, which is constantly hyped by Farcaster and Zora, they finally found an “organization” that treats developers as people.

Shivam Tandon, founder of zkCross Network, also had a similar experience. He initially believed in Jesse’s story of product and builder prioritization, but after developing Surf on Base, their efforts to contact Base via email, DMs, etc., also went unanswered. Shivam Tandon said he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Base wanting to support projects invested in by Coinbase, but hopes they can be straightforward and not waste developers’ time.

Although some very pragmatic users believe that Base has its preferences and cannot attribute project failures solely to this, most still expressed support for tuna.

Developer criticism of Base is not new. In February 2025, a user named Lamboland believed that Base’s style seemed not “degen” enough. Despite Virtuals being a highly trafficked project, Coinbase had shown no support, yet VVV tokens were launched on the same day. Lamboland said many projects are considering migrating to Solana, mainly because Base’s marketing is detached from reality, and there are no experienced “old hands” familiar with CT culture to build a healthy community environment.

Coincidentally, just two weeks ago, Jacek, a member of DEGEN, which previously airdropped $50 million worth of tokens to Farcaster users and once had a market cap exceeding $1 billion, also posted a long tweet expressing disappointment with Base.

Jacek said that developers chose Base largely because of Coinbase’s backing, hoping for support or brand endorsement. But as the previous two mentioned, Base has focused much of its energy on projects like Zora. Projects like DEGEN, which brought huge traffic to Base, are not even acknowledged or retweeted by Base’s official account. In his view, anything outside the mainstream narrative for Base is practically nonexistent.

Additionally, DEGEN’s proposal to launch a $1 million airdrop on Base and Base App was ignored. Jacek said that when DEGEN announced plans to cross-chain to Solana, it immediately gained attention and support from Solana. At offline events, Solana officials are eager to interact with ecosystem projects and even gave away Bonk keychains. These small details reflect respect from the official side for developers and participants. In contrast, Jacek said he doesn’t mind promoting Zora, but the indifferent attitude towards other projects is disappointing.

Interestingly, in the face of such severe public opinion, neither Base nor Jesse made any explanations or offered solutions in response to these tweets. On the 9th of this month, Jesse retweeted a tweet from Base product Nick expressing willingness to assist developers, but the comment section was full of doubts, mainly asking: What exactly are you planning to do to help?

Over the past year, Base has indeed been a gold rush, but almost suddenly “died” after flagship projects stalled. Unlike Solana, Base is part of the Coinbase ecosystem, an extension of the exchange, born with the purpose of serving stakeholders. Clearly, the unhealthy practices within the scaled Coinbase have also affected Base’s operation. Perhaps Base’s moment of glory was indeed supported by Coinbase’s strong resources, but the core contributors to its brief success remain talented developers within the community.

Coinbase’s plan for Base in 2026 mainly revolves around asset onboarding and the Base App. Coinbase intends to gradually develop it into a comprehensive exchange, with areas like stock tokenization and commodity tokenization primarily handled by Base. Additionally, the Base App is planned to be a Web3 traffic portal integrating trading, social, and wallet functions. It is evident that in the future, Base will likely continue to adhere to its “mainstream narrative,” with its functional support for Coinbase remaining stronger than its openness to the community itself.

In the past year, Base aimed to leverage its influence to promote projects like Farcaster and Zora, which are backed by capital and follow the “orthodox” narrative, but misjudged the current market’s “crazy” mainstream trend. For Coinbase, it is crucial to clarify whether Base is merely a tool to serve the exchange and Coinbase Ventures, or a truly open network for the world. If the latter, it must follow the “from the crowd, to the crowd” philosophy like Solana.