This episode reveals how the Base app is pioneering a new on-chain creator economy by transforming social content into a tradable, market-driven asset class.
The Vision: An "Everything App" for the On-Chain World
- Beyond a Single Chain: Pollak clarifies that the app is a "bridge, not an island," integrating multiple EVM chains like Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum, with plans for Solana and others. This multi-chain approach is central to providing users with access to the entire on-chain ecosystem, not just Base.
- Consumer-First Experience: The core goal was to create a product that non-crypto natives, like his own mother, could immediately understand and use. The app combines social posting, chat, payments, trading, and an app explorer into a single, seamless interface.
- A Product That Matches the Vision: Pollak explains the disconnect between the abstract vision of a "global on-chain economy" and the user experience of existing wallets. He states, "The way I think about the base app is that for the first time we have a product that matches the vision."
Challenging the Broken Economics of Web2 Social
- Creator Discontent: Pollak points to a "bubbling discontent" among creators who receive less than 5% of the total revenue generated by major platforms. This creates a fundamental misalignment where creators provide the value, but platforms capture the profit.
- An Open Protocol Foundation: The Base app is built by composing multiple open protocols, including Ethereum for settlement, Farcaster for the social graph, XMTP for messaging, and Zora for minting. Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol, while XMTP (Extensible Message Transport Protocol) enables secure, private messaging between wallet addresses.
- Strategic Implication: This protocol-first architecture is a key differentiator. For researchers, it offers a case study in composable systems. For investors, it signals a shift from investing in siloed platforms to investing in the foundational protocols that power a new generation of applications.
The "Post and Earn" Revolution
- Instant, Permissionless Payouts: Unlike Web2 platforms that have high follower thresholds, geographic restrictions, and long payout delays, the Base app enables instant earnings. Pollak highlights examples of creators earning thousands of dollars from single viral posts.
- The Power of Immediacy: "The immediacy of my content is valuable and I'm earning for it is really, really profound and that's something that's when creators come in that it's hooking them."
- Addressing Skepticism: Pollak acknowledges that not every post will go viral and that creators with larger existing audiences (like himself or Brian Armstrong) will naturally earn more. However, he argues that this is a feature of distribution, not a flaw in the model, and the system's potential at scale is immense.
Growth Strategy: Nurturing a New Generation of Creators
- The Early Adopter Advantage: With only a few thousand daily users currently, Pollak emphasizes that now is the time for new creators to get in on the "ground floor." He frames it as an opportunity for those who are "good and early" to build an audience and achieve outsized success.
- Targeting Underserved Verticals: The Base team is actively seeking up-and-coming creators across non-crypto verticals like fitness, food, and small business, promising to provide them with the tools and support to succeed.
- Global and Level Playing Field: A key promise is that anyone, anywhere in the world, can download the app and start earning. This removes the geographic and economic barriers prevalent in the traditional creator economy.
Optimizing for a New Content Form Factor: Mini-Apps
- Mini-Apps as Viral Content: Mini-apps are composable, interactive experiences built by third-party developers that can be embedded directly in the social feed or in messages. Users can interact with them—from playing a game to making a purchase—with a single tap.
- A New Creative Canvas: Pollak sees mini-apps as the "biggest net new form factor" that turns a post into a canvas for viral, interactive experiences. This opens a new design space for developers and creators to build things that are impossible on Web2 platforms.
- Actionable Insight: The development and adoption of mini-apps represent a significant investment and research opportunity. Tracking which mini-apps gain traction can provide early signals about emergent user behaviors and successful on-chain business models.
The Market-Based Algorithm: Composing Value with Coins
- Composing Monetization: Pollak describes innovative models being explored, such as linking the coin of a "quote post" to the coin of the original post. This is achieved using a bonding curve, an automated market maker contract that mints and burns tokens according to a price-supply formula. This ensures that engagement with derivative content drives value back to the original creator.
- Creator Coins and Content Pairing: He also mentions the integration of long-term creator coins (pioneered by Zora), where every new piece of content is automatically paired with the creator's primary coin, channeling all demand for individual posts into the creator's overall "stock."
- From Corporate Valuation to Free Market: "We've brought it on chain into the free market where before it was one corporation that was valuing that thing... now we're going to let the free market value your content."
Navigating Creator Concerns and the Stigma of Coins
- Two Ways to Earn: He explains that creators earn in two primary ways: 1) from trading fees generated by the attention on their content, and 2) by holding the 1% of the coin supply they receive upon creation.
- Strategic Advice for Creators: Pollak strongly advises creators not to sell their initial 1% stake. He argues that holding it signals belief in their own content, which builds collector confidence. The sustainable income comes from the recurring fees generated by trading activity on viral posts, not from a one-time sale.
- Investor Parallel: This dynamic mirrors investor relations in traditional markets. A founder constantly selling their own stock erodes market confidence. The same principle applies to the on-chain creator economy.
Conclusion
The Base app represents a bold experiment in building a social network on a free-market foundation, where content value is determined by open protocols, not corporate algorithms. For investors and researchers, this signals a critical shift toward market-based social systems and composable, on-chain applications that could redefine the creator economy.
