Base Co-creation Token Experiment: Can Celebrity Effect Support the Ecological Flywheel?

Today, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak announced that his personal creator token, jesse, will be launched on the Base App, scheduled for November 20 at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (1:00 AM Beijing Time on November 21). The jesse token will be launched from his Base App account jesse.base.eth.

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Thanks to this news, Zora, which supports creator tokens for the Base App, has risen about 8% during the day.

Why is Jesse launching his personal token? He stated on X, "Content tokens track short-term attention, while creator tokens track long-term content value. The combination of both creates a flywheel effect that returns ownership, control, and revenue rights back to creators and their fans. With $jesse, my flywheel effect will be complete."

In reality, this seems very much like a personal advertisement for the Base App. The Base App is akin to Coinbase's own "Alipay," serving as the application hub of the Base network, encompassing a social network with a creator economy mechanism, allowing for token trading and transfers, and even featuring a "Yu'ebao"—where USDC in the Base App can enjoy an annual yield of up to 3.85%.

Ironically, Jesse's explanation for issuing his personal token was in response to a tweet that said:

"The last time I bought a token you promoted, it went to zero within hours."

Among the prominent figures in the crypto space, Jesse has left a poor impression on retail investors, being notorious for "shouting out calls but forgetting them afterward." However, from the perspective of his role as a co-founder of Base, seeking attention and development for his own chain, his actions are quite understandable.

On April 17, the official Base Twitter account posted, "Base is for everyone," along with a link to a token launched on Zora.

The market cap of that token instantly surged to $17 million, only to plummet 90% within five minutes. In response, a spokesperson from Base stated in an email to The Block that Base did not launch "Base is for everyone," as it was automatically minted by the Zora platform, and Base merely posted about it on that platform. The token is neither an official Base token, nor did Base sell it.

In fact, about an hour before the official Base tweet, Jesse had posted a tweet on Zora about the difference between content tokens and meme tokens. During those days, he was fervently sharing his views on content tokens, and a week later, Zora issued a token.

An interesting subplot is that at the time, alon, the founder of pump.fun, jumped in to claim that the idea of tokenizing everything is harmful to the market, especially for influential people, as issuing tokens means taking on corresponding responsibilities, which is an unwritten but tacit rule in the blockchain space.

Now, alon has gone from a righteous figure to being questioned daily in the trenches with "Where's your airdrop?" while Jesse has stepped up to finally issue a token that takes on responsibility. The crypto space is indeed fascinating.

In addition to launching a bunch of content tokens related to his tweets on Zora, Jesse has also bought tokens, such as:

• On July 18, 2024, he spent 0.3 ETH to buy the Base ecosystem meme token MIGGLES, which later reached a market cap of about $120 million, currently around $8.8 million.

• On November 21, 2024, he spent 0.333 ETH to buy the meme token ANON deployed by clanker AI on farcaster, which later reached a market cap of about $65 million, currently around $970,000.

These can be understood as his support for tokens within his own ecosystem. Recently, to attract meme tokens from Solana to bridge to Base, he not only had an abstract show with Chillhouse but also personally bought some meme tokens on Solana.

So, returning to Jesse's issuance of a personal token, the visions he describes cannot be easily trusted by retail investors. As he initially replied to alon, these things are his "attempts to grow the pie and try new things." On one hand, his statement as the head of Base makes sense, while on the other hand, it reveals his mindset regarding issuing tokens, which is "since it's an attempt, it could fail."

For retail investors, this sounds very ruthless, but it cannot be said to be entirely unreasonable, because even in more mature stock markets, there is always a sign at the entrance saying "The stock market is risky; invest with caution." No company will persistently push its stock price out of "consideration for retail investors." Many people often say that many meme tokens are "conspiracy schemes." If information asymmetry can be called a "conspiracy," then perhaps all meme tokens are "conspiracy schemes," because there are always various motives behind price increases.

This may be a difference that exists between domestic and foreign contexts, or more accurately, a difference caused by the differing interests of retail investors and project parties. For many prominent foreign figures in the crypto space, issuing tokens does not carry such grand goals, nor is there a heavy moral burden. If successful, it is just luck or skill; if it fails, it is simply a failure. Life has many failures, and issuing tokens is just one of them. Moreover, even if there are well-meaning developers or crypto celebrities, it does not mean they understand the meme market better than retail investors.

For example, recently, the privacy-themed meme token mec on Solana originated from a joke by Helius CEO @0xMert_ during a live stream and was deployed by Synthetix and Infinex founder @kaiynne. At that time, @kaiynne stated that mec, which he launched for the third time, was his "redemption work." However, all he could do was use the creator income generated by the token for buybacks, and then there was nothing more.

It is unrealistic to hope that celebrities will always pull up prices out of concern for their reputations.

Will Jesse take this seriously? It's possible; the token may experience a short-term surge after launch, but such potential should not be the basis for heavy investment. Approaching it as an attempt to engage with the Base App and making a small purchase as an interaction to potentially receive future Base token airdrops, while lowering expectations for this new token, would be a more manageable strategy.