Fortune Column Analysis: Coinbase Base's Dilemma Reflects Crypto Transformation
Fortune columnist Jeff John Roberts writes that the development difficulties of Coinbase's Layer2 network Base reflect the crypto industry's shift away from token speculation towards mature financial infrastructure and application scenarios.
Base initially aimed to create a decentralized trading and creator token social ecosystem but has not succeeded. Head Jesse Pollak admitted the misdirection towards social platforms; Base currently resembles a high-cost experiment, lagging behind competitors like Hyperliquid and Robinhood, while facing resource allocation issues and community disputes.
This event drives crypto capital from subcultural speculation towards on-chain trading, prediction markets, and RWA (Real World Assets) in traditional financial scenarios. Emerging platforms like Hyperliquid benefit from institutional demand, while Coinbase needs to adjust its strategy. The X402 AI agent payment protocol, born from the Base experiment, could become a potential long-term value point.
Source: Public Information
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Coinbase previously heavily promoted Base as a Layer2 expansion for trading and social, but this has been criticized as a strategic error, continuing its historical path of shifting from speculative hotspots to infrastructure attempts during crypto cycles.
On the capital front, Coinbase is reallocating resources from creator tokens and social applications to financial infrastructure development, motivated by adapting to a new phase of retail investor loss and institutional entry, aiming to capture the Wall Street tokenization trend through RWA and payment protocols.
Similar to traditional tech companies transitioning from consumer social to enterprise-level B2B infrastructure, or the crypto industry's evolution from the ICO boom to DeFi maturity, Coinbase is currently at a critical stage of transforming from subcultural-driven to mainstream financial service provider.
Structural Judgment Essentially belongs to the reconstruction of the industrial chain: the crypto industry is shifting from developer token speculation models to institution-friendly financial infrastructure, driven by retail exits and increased regulatory/institutional demand after multiple cycles, pushing capital from high-risk narratives towards stable cash flow applications.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- When speculative funds retreat, infrastructure is the way out.
- Social experiments are prone to failure, payment protocols can become standards.
- After subcultural narratives, Wall Street logic dominates growth.