Coinbase CEO: "Base is not biased towards creators… Social features are a means of disseminating content."

Brian Armstrong responds to the community's open letter: "Our goal is to support diverse uses and distribute revenue to all developers."

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has directly addressed community concerns that his Layer 2 blockchain, Base, is overly focused on the creator economy. This follows an open letter from some community members to Base, which pointed out that "Base is increasingly focusing on a framework centered around the creator economy rather than the on-chain economy, and is repeatedly promoting creator tokens."

CEO Armstrong emphasized that Base is a general-purpose blockchain, not limited to a specific field. "Basechain is suitable for a wide range of uses, including payments, trading, decentralized finance (DeFi), application and enterprise development," he said. "Our goal is to ensure that all developers working on Base receive a share of the revenue."

In particular, he explained that social features play a crucial role in the Base ecosystem. "Social feeds are crucial for content distribution," Armstrong said. "They're essential for everything from startups and enterprises to developers, investors, prediction markets, social trading, and even alpha and insights."

He evaluated cryptocurrencies as an excellent indicator of content ranking. "Because cryptocurrency involves real value exchange, manipulation like bot farms, commonly seen on traditional social media, is much more difficult," he explained. "Therefore, social feeds, especially those with native cryptocurrency 'like' features, are crucial."

However, CEO Armstrong acknowledged that it's not yet clear what type of content will ultimately perform best on social feeds. "We'll only know after we actually launch and collect data," he said. "How users behave within the app will be a key metric for iteration."

CEO Armstrong's response is interpreted as an attempt to address community concerns about Base's direction and clarify the platform's comprehensive vision. Base aims to establish itself as a comprehensive blockchain platform encompassing everything from payments to DeFi and social functions.

As Layer 2 competition intensifies, the blockchain industry is closely watching how Base will find a balance between the creator economy and the on-chain economy. In particular, the key question will be whether a new content distribution model combining social features and cryptocurrency can truly be effective.

Joohoon Choi joohoon@blockstreet.co.kr