The Chopping Block: All About That Base With Jesse Pollak - Ep. 535

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Aug 24, 2023

Jesse Pollak, lead contributor at Base, a blockchain by Coinbase, shares insights on the platform's goal to onboard a million developers and a billion users. He highlights why it's still 'day one' for Base and discusses its advantages over other layer 2 solutions. The conversation dives into the rapid success of Friend.Tech, the influence of MEV bots on transactions, and the importance of innovative incentives to foster growth. Pollak also clarifies the competition and collaboration between Base and Optimism, shaping the future of decentralized applications.

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ANECDOTE

Friend.tech's Rise on Base

Friend.tech, a social platform on Base, has gained significant traction, attracting even non-crypto native users.
This mirrors Solana's experience with a single dominant application driving network activity.

INSIGHT

Differentiating Base

Haseeb Qureshi asks what differentiates Base from other Layer 2s like Optimism or Arbitrum.
He is curious about what makes Base's scaling solution stand out in the current crypto landscape.

INSIGHT

Base's Seamless User Experience

Base aims for seamless user experience by working with Coinbase.
Base has a unique feedback loop from Coinbase's interface to Base's infrastructure.

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Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news. This week, Coinbase’s Jesse Pollak talks about the ambitious goals of Base, the new Optimism–based blockchain from the publicly traded crypto giant. With the viral success of Base-based Friend.Tech, Jesse discusses the Base team’s ambitious goals to onboard “a million builders, a billion users.” Is this the long-heralded path to scaling Ethereum?

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights:

why Jesse says it’s still “day one” for Base
the reason behind Base’s “one million developers, one billion users” slogan
what the advantages of Base are compared to other layer 2 blockchains
how Base accounts for the fact that it doesn’t have a token to incentivize developer activity
how MEV bots represent a big part of the transactions on Base, especially with the emergence of Friend.Tech
why Friend.Tech found early success despite being similar to previous efforts
Jesse’s response to the fact that fault proofs are not live on any of the OP Stack chains
how much of the revenue generated by Coinbase’s sequencer will be distributed to Optimism
whether Base and Optimism Mainnet compete with each other
how layer 2 chains are choosing different design paths and how that differentiates them

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly
Robert Leshner, founder of Compound
Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures

Guest

Jesse Pollak, lead contributor at Base

The Chopping Block: All About That Base With Jesse Pollak - Ep. 535

Friend.tech's Rise on Base

Differentiating Base

Base's Seamless User Experience

Hosts

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