Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says Base App’s SocialFi features ‘didn’t quite work’

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong didn’t mince words when he said the SocialFi experiments tested out in the Base App last year “didn’t quite work” in a recent episode of David Senra’s eponymous podcast.

“In the current incarnation, it wasn’t quite there in my view,” Armstrong said. “We tried it as an experiment. It didn’t quite work. The App has since pivoted to be more focused on trading and being a self-custodial version of the Coinbase app.”

In July 2025, Coinbase relaunched its noncustodial Coinbase Wallet as the Base App, pitched as an all-in-one “everything app” combining features of onchain social media, messaging, and gaming with its existing trading features.

Jesse Pollak, the head of Base at Coinbase, also heavily promoted the app’s Creator Coin features, which tokenized social media posts and creator accounts. Users could double-tap posts to buy associated tokens, with value flowing to creators.

“People were thinking of it as a way to reward and thank the creator,” Armstrong said. 

However, Coinbase has since scaled back the SocialFi elements of the Base App to focus on trading. In January, Pollak posted to social media that “the app felt overly focused on social” and would “lean into a finance-first UX.”

The following month, Base also removed its Farcaster-powered social feed, shortly after that decentralized social media platform’s founding team sold the protocol.

While some notable creator coins briefly captured an audience, practically none of the tokens launched have maintained their value. For instance, Nick Shirley, a video journalist who went viral last year for reporting on alleged daycare fraud in Minnesota, launched what is often considered to be the most high-profile creator coin via Zora. $thenickshirley rallied to a $15 million market cap after being promoted by Armstrong, only for the token to crater.

Armstrong noted that “many posts” had “thousands of dollars worth of value at the terminal end” of Base’s SocialFi experiment.

“I think something is going to work in SocialFi,” Armstrong said, noting that the “tokenomics have not been quite figured out yet” and that the token’s “need to have some durability.”

Success and struggle

Still, at its height, Base grew to become the most popular chain for token launches in part due to the near-zero-cost token deployment enabled by Zora’s content coin mechanism. Asset manager Franklin Templeton also previously praised Base’s SocialFi appeal, largely due to the excitement around the launch of FriendTech v2 in 2024, which has since petered out.

Base’s creator coins are far from the only SocialFi experiment to struggle. In January, Aave Labs spun out Lens Protocol. Zora, meanwhile, has launched a new “attention markets” feature allowing users to bet on social media trends on Solana.

The Base protocol itself is undergoing a significant shift by replacing much of the OP Stack it was built on with bespoke parts. The Base team is also reportedly considering launching a native token.

Although Armstrong noted Base App’s SocialFi features were “polarizing,” he appeared grateful for the experience. The Coinbase co-founder and CEO noted that the company runs internal funding initiatives inspired by venture capital, where employees can pitch ideas to receive corporate funds, sometimes leading to outsized returns.

USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, was one such idea Armstrong initially “voted no” on, he said.

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