What up? Hey everybody, how's it going?
Jesse's another guy who just woke up one day and was like trying to reserve a domain name for a new L2 and then all of a sudden actually launched.
Yeah, that was how Base started. Totally totally fumbled into it.
Nice, man. Well, yeah. What a journey.
It has been a I mean, it's crazy that it was How long's it been? Like I I remember the other day I remembered I was like, 'Oh this just launched that year.' FWBF Fest like a year and a half ago or something. It feels like it's less than two years. So like yeah, we went live in like mid August 2023. So yeah, it's been like 21 months.
Wild. Wild. Yeah. So, so it feels like you guys have really flipped the switch recently to kind of focus on scaling activity on Base with, you know, partnerships with JP Morgan, Spotify, you know, Dex is integrated into the core product and, you know, a bunch of the kind of onchain stuff you're integrating into the new Coinbase Wallet. So, I'm curious if this is this kind of like an artifact of the times and improving regulatory landscape or is this kind of an explicit strategic shift that you feel like the foundations are in place and now you can kind of go scale this thing?
Definitely an explicit strategic shift. Um, you know, I I feel like we spent the last two, you know, 21 months focused very much on the builder side where we wanted to make sure that we had the infrastructure and platform to be fast, low-cost, trustworthy, and really easy to build on. Um, and you know, we're not done with that work, but it's it's mostly there. Like you can go from zero to one with an onchain product uh and uh do that in like a day, especially with vibe coding tools nowadays. And then you can plug into Farcaster or the new Coinbase Wallet and get distribution out of the box. But I think the the problem that we've seen is that okay, now we have these great tools to build these new apps. But we don't have the kind of demand on the consumer side to actually make it so that we have the the flywheel working because the ultimate flywheel is like you have great developers building apps. Uh those developers then serve those apps to consumers. The consumers have something to do. They tell their friends. They bring more people onchain which attracts more developers which attracts more consumers. Um, and right now that flywheel is not yet spinning. And I think that's generally why you you've seen um some level of malaise on crypto over the last, you know, crypto Twitter over the last six to 12 months. Um, even as things like the Bitcoin price are up, I think everyone's feeling like pretty downstream of the fact that the pie actually isn't growing right now. Like there's not that much net new consumer adoption happening in the space. And so really at the beginning of this year um I took over Coinbase Wallet and that was a strategic shift um for for us where it was really a a moment to say hey um the biggest problem is that we don't have uh a growing pie on the consumer side. And so uh let's shift my focus a little bit um to go from okay now we have a great team that's running all the builder side stuff. Let's go and execute really hard on the consumer stuff. Uh and that's been a collaboration with the Coinbase team. It's been a collaboration with big brands obviously like Shopify. Um, and then it's been, you know, doing a net new product build from the ground up with Coinbase Wallet where we literally started rewriting the app from scratch at the beginning of the year. And, uh, it's in a very closed private beta right now. And then we're rolling it out much more aggressively over the next few weeks. We have a big event coming up on July 16th called a new day one where we'll be talking more about that um, and announcing a bunch of other really cool stuff. And so, you know, I think this is this is the next chapter. Uh, and I I uh I like to joke that I've gone from saying builders, builders, builders to saying creators, creators, creators because I think this next phase of consumer adoption is really going to be driven by creators. There's 200 to 300x more uh creators in the world than developers. Um, and creators can be builders, too. But it's a new archetype, and they need new tools, and they need new types of consumer products, uh, which is what we're 100% focused on, uh, on the consumer side, both with the new Coinbase Wallet, uh, which is going to have a new name, uh, TBA. Uh, uh, so that's an exciting thing that I maybe just alpha leaked on 11 a.m.
Um, what's it going to be called, Jesse? I mean, give us the first letter in your dog's name.
I I can't can't give any letters. I'll just say it's TBA. Um, stay tuned.
That's a a strange name for an app, TBA.
And uh and uh yeah, and then we're gonna we're gonna uh uh you know, basically focus on bringing on creators because those creators are then going to create the content that combines with the apps to make it so there's really a reason for everyone to be onchain every single day. So, we're fired up about it.
You got your PR person very excited in the chat, Jesse.
I didn't even know she I didn't even know she was here. That was that was That wasn't fully planned, but um you know it's some scheduling challenges.
Appreciate it. Um Jesse, I think you know we've seen in maybe the last cycle this um you know blockchains going after big brands uh you know whether it's the Starbucks or yada yada where there's sort of the sense of a large consumer base being there and yet we really haven't seen those sort of types of let's call them pilots you know actually result in major new user growth. You know, I think Polygon's probably done better with with uh Polymarket than they've done with any of the bigger brands that had far more reach, etc. Um, and you know, I think if you looked at the headlines maybe from coming out within the Base world, a lot of these partnerships could be cast in that light, right? There there's big brands, but like are they really going to go do something? But even in your answer here, it sounds like you you are approaching this a little different. Is it the timing different that we should be going after the the the Spotify and the and the Shopifies of the world? Um or is this a different strategy that you're trying to take on here?
Yeah, I'd say I I'd say a few things are different. One is that the technology is just in a much better place now than it was a few years ago where we can actually build the things that we're dreaming of. Like you can actually build a global payments product that just works. Um so I think that's one big change. And then I think the second big shift is we we take a very product-centric approach to these sorts of collaborations. Like we're not going and like doing pay-to-play. Like that's just not the way we operate. It's never been the way we operate. And I think part of that's just been the rigor of not having a token and having to go earn it at every single point of like this is the best product and that's why people are choosing to build with us. Um, but what that means is that when we're doing these sorts of collaborations and when we're investing time in them, the really like litmus test that we're looking for is this is someone who's serious. And I think in the case of Shopify, you know, you had Tobi the CEO pinging me, how do we write a smart contract to do a capture? Uh, and then we got on a call, we started jamming and he brought in his VPs and was like, 'Okay, it's time. The technology is ready. Let's go.' And our team spent the last nine months like co-architecting an onchain commerce protocol, building that natively into the Shopify experience. Uh, building some really cool stuff on the Base side, which we also haven't fully shared yet, but we'll be talking about more soon. Um, that kind of plugs into it. Uh, and really figuring out how do we deliver a product experience that could make it so anyone anywhere in the world could pay at a Shopify store and any merchant anywhere in the world could accept payments because that's that's like a hard problem that isn't easily solvable with the traditional rails but Shopify has the vision to see hey we're the largest kind of like platform for e-commerce businesses in the world we served 175 million consumers last year and a trillion dollars of payments but we're still pretty limited right Shopify Payments right now is only available in 32 countries. Well, what if they could do their payments in all of the countries in the world? What if they could expand that entrepreneurship platform to every entrepreneur in the world? What if they could expand their consumer base to every consumer in the world? That opportunity and then the fact that the technology is ready and then the fact that we have these teams collaborating to not just do a a partnership, but to literally build protocols and product. I think that that's the big difference. Um, and we're just excited to get to be a part of it.
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, Jesse, I'm curious about so talking a lot about creators. Obviously, you guys focus a lot on on kind of like the long tail of of builders, too. Base Batch is just finished, I think, had I don't like 10,000 particip like some absurd number of participants, right? So, you know, this is a very different strategy than, you know, some other chains take where they're very focused on kind of small groups of the most kind of ambitious founders they can find, work very closely with them, and really trying to create the the kind of canonical success stories. So, I'm curious, obviously you guys still want that, but I'm curious why you're so focused on this kind of long tail of creators and builders versus, you know, just working really hands-on with like, you know, 20 20 kind of core teams.
