David Edwards
Exchange of cryptocurrency Coinbase is separating its Base blockchain network from a contentious memecoin that was widely criticized by the cryptocurrency industry for a spectacular crash that happened soon after it launched.
Base promoted its marketing phrase, “Base is for everyone,” on X on April 16. The post included a link to a similar token made on Zora, a social media site that tokenizes messages for speculation. According to statistics from DEX Screener, the token “Base is for everyone” peaked at $17.1 million in market capitalization within an hour, but within 20 minutes, it fell by almost 90% to a valuation of $1.9 million.
The backlash was quick, even if the token’s market capitalization has now partially rebounded to about $7.7 million. Cointelegraph was reminded by a Coinbase representative that Base was not directly involved in the token’s launch. “Base did not launch a token,” the representative clarified, noting that Zora’s platform automatically tokenizes content and that Base’s post contained a legal disclaimer warning against expectations of profit or development efforts.
Although Base distanced itself, it admitted that it had received 10 million of the 1 billion tokens, promising not to sell them, and promised to use transaction fee income to support grants for Base network developers. According to Zora data, Base has made more than $61,000 from the token’s activity as of this writing, with over $26 million in total trading volume.
But public opinion has been overwhelmingly unfavorable. The episode was deemed “terrible for the industry,” by former Riot Platforms researcher Pierre Rochard, who accused Base of short-term value extraction. Abhishek Pawa, the creator of AP Collective, praised the creative potential of “contentcoins” but denounced Base’s “fumbled execution” and inadequate handling of user expectations.
