Base trading and AI pivot raises questions – ‘Shows weakness as Robinhood Chain takes off’
Can Base regain ground amid tight competition from new players like Robinhood Chain?
Base, a Coinbase-incubated Ethereum layer 2 (L2), has announced that it will ditch its initial social push.
According to the founder, Jesse Pollak, the social vision was a ‘wrong’ bet, adding that they will focus on other trending segments like trading, payments, and AI agents.
In my opinion, we made the right bet on builders, but obviously the wrong bet on social.
Pollak noted that he was betting on builders and on-chain social experiences in the past two years. The latter failed to materialize as expected, including creator coins.
In fact, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently acknowledged the same, following strong criticism on the L2’s priority.
Agree with the first part and your point on content coins. They didn’t work, and we pivoted early this year. We messed up, time to turn the page.
As part of the pivot, Pollak said he will remain the leader of Base, but the Base app will be steered by crypto investor Jordan Fish, popularly known as Cobie on X.
We’re going to build Base into the blockchain for global finance. In 2026, this concretely means three things: winning trading, payments, and agents.
Will Robinhood Chain flip Base?
Interestingly, the pivot followed an aggressive push by Robinhood Chain, another Ethereum L2, that debuted this month. The Robinhood L2 publicly embraced memecoin trading and is now rivaling Hyperliquid and Base based on DEX volumes.
In the past 24 hours alone, the L2 recorded $800M in volume while Base had $880M. When zoomed out on the weekly activity, this stood at $5B and $6B, respectively.
In other words, Robinhood could likely flip Base to become the third-largest chain for speculative activity after Solana and Ethereum. In fact, one analyst, Jonah, questioned the sudden Base pivot.
Base is showing weakness just as Robinhood Chain is taking off. Why would Base do this?
Well, every crypto platform and exchange wants to be a super app for finance. From Hyperliquid to Binance, trading, tokenization, payments, and more are increasingly being integrated.
It remains to be seen whether the pivot will delay the possibility of Robinhood Chain surpassing it on DEX volume.
Final Summary
- Base has ditched the social experiment and will focus on trading, tokenization, and AI agents
- The move comes amid increased competition from Robinhood L2, and Coinbase CEO acknowledgment that some Base experiments, including creator coins, failed.
