Author: Nancy, PANews
Unlike the recent revival of MEME culture on Solana, the MEME ecosystem on Base remains dormant. However, on April 17, Base's Official Twitter suddenly intervened, sharing MEME coins like "Base is for everyone" on X, attempting to ignite on-chain cultural enthusiasm.
This carefully planned on-chain cultural revival experiment quickly spiraled out of control - the related MEME coin surged rapidly and then crashed, pushing Base to the center of public opinion. However, the story did not end there. As "Base is for everyone" was remixed into a popular meme, the MEME coin price unexpectedly performed a V-shaped reversal, and on-chain sentiment fluctuated dramatically.
Base Token Issuance Causes Controversy, Marketing Backfires and Unexpectedly Reverses
In the early morning of April 17, Base officially issued a token named "Base is for everyone" on the Zora platform, which was prominently shared via Official Twitter. Subsequently, the MEME coin's price quickly soared to $17 million, instantly igniting the long-silent community atmosphere. However, Base then launched a second token "Base @ FarCon 2025", an abrupt move perceived by the community as a "backstab", causing the "Base is for everyone" token price to plummet 99% within hours, dropping to as low as $717,000.
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Behind this crash, besides uncontrolled token issuance, high transaction taxes and insider trading suspicions also served as triggers. The MEME coin reportedly set a 20% buy/sell tax, resulting in extremely high actual transaction costs and significantly weakening liquidity. Moreover, token distribution was highly unbalanced, with the top three wallets holding 47% of tokens, one wallet alone holding 25.6%, raising market manipulation concerns. According to Lookonchain, three wallets bought large amounts of the token before Base's official tweet and subsequently sold, profiting approximately $666,000. The community's anger over insider trading further damaged Base's credibility.
Facing the controversy, Base attributed this to an "experimental marketing" effort. Base's official response stated that they posted on Zora believing everyone should bring their content on-chain and use tools enabling this. Memes, moments, culture. If Base wants a future in the on-chain world, they must be willing to boldly experiment publicly. Base is not selling these tokens, and they are not official network tokens for Base, Coinbase, or any related products. Base's shared content is a creative expression aimed at continuously bringing culture on-chain.
Base's global builder NKECHI also clarified on Twitter that Base did not issue tokens for pump and dump, but created a "content token" fundamentally different from MEME coins. The core of content tokens is not speculation, but meaning. You're not buying a project, but a moment, an atmosphere, a cultural segment. This is on-chain expression, not on-chain expectation. This field is new, and Base is still learning, but don't mistake "misunderstanding" for "failure". Base has always been about bringing culture on-chain, publicly experimenting, and supporting permissionless creative expression. In this new economy, everyone - whether brands, developers, artists, or shitposters - can put content on-chain and turn it into a "coin". Posters, advertisements, videos, memes, art - all can be coined. This is not just content, but a new marketing, creation, and expression method.
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Despite official efforts to clarify, this controversy did not immediately subside. Instead, it unexpectedly sparked a meme movement, with the community and crypto projects creating viral content using "** is for everyone" as a template, with satire and narrative power. Boosted by market sentiment, Base's marketing accidentally gained extremely high attention, with the "Base is for everyone" token performing a dramatic V-shaped reversal. According to GMGN data, the token rebounded to $22.55 million, with trading volume exceeding $33 million in the past 24 hours.
Daily Revenue Reaches Two-Year High, Zora Preparing Token Issuance
"Zora is a social network where every post is a MEME coin." In this Base token issuance controversy, Zora was the direct beneficiary of traffic and revenue.
According to Blockworks data, Zora's latest daily revenue exceeded $137,000, reaching a rare high point in nearly two years. Previously, affected by the NFT market downturn, Zora had experienced a significant decline in participation. However, compared to the NFT boom's revenue, Zora's current stage has seen considerable reduction.
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Moreover, Zora's market participation remains limited. Dune data shows that in the past two months, Zora's daily independent creator count remained in the tens of millions, with daily token creation between thousands to tens of thousands. Compared to other MEME coin issuance platforms like Pump.fun, Zora's market share still lags: as of April 16, Pump.fun and Zora's market shares were 74.3% and 25.7% respectively. Within the Base ecosystem, Zora's token issuance accounts for only 4%, with very limited influence.
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This Base token issuance was interpreted by the outside world as Zora's marketing. In March this year, Zora announced plans to launch a native token ZORA on the Base network, with a total supply of 10 billion. The first snapshot was taken on March 3, 2025, at 9 AM Eastern Standard Time, with the second snapshot to be taken three days before ZORA's launch.
Furthermore, Zora's operational model aligns with Base and Coinbase's vision, with the platform converting each post into a tradable ERC-20 token. In fact, Coinbase has been actively promoting the "on-chain creator economy", encouraging creators to launch projects on-chain and co-hosting Onchain Summer with Base. According to previous Zora disclosures, Zora has over 2.4 million collectors and 618,000 creators, generating over $27.7 million in rewards and driving over $376 million in secondary market transactions.
Overall, from ignition to backfire to comeback, this farcical cultural experiment not only reignited MEME market attention for Base but also once again demonstrated the absurdity and vitality of on-chain culture.
