- Jesse Pollak, head of protocol at Base, said the core team will not privately coordinate capital to push token prices.
- Pollak linked the practice to disadvantaging other assets, violating market values and possibly breaking the law.
- Some users asked Base or Coinbase to publicly back promising tokens instead of behind‑the‑scenes support.
- Community figures debated public buying versus private market support and noted past internal backing by staff.
- Discussion references a recent $25 million NFT purchase tied to the UpOnly podcast and a broader $375 million deal for Echo.
Jesse Pollak, head of protocol at Base, posted on X on Jan. 27 that the Base core team will not privately coordinate funds to push a token’s price to a targeted level. He said such actions would harm other assets, clash with open‑market values and could be illegal. (See his statement here.)
Pollak’s post came after Bill The Bull, a Base community podcaster, urged the platform to pick token communities to “support behind the scenes” to create major price moves. Bill’s original post asking for support is linked here, and his follow‑up about Base not pushing tokens to million‑dollar figures is linked here. Bill later said he respected Pollak’s stance (response).
Pollak wrote that the team would not “privately / behind the scenes coordinating and deploying capital to actively drive the price of an asset up in an attempt to get to a specific outcome,” and listed reasons it would “actively disadvantage other assets,” be non‑repeatable, violate values around free markets and “likely be against the law.” His full post is available here.
Other community members pushed back. An Enterprise Research Manager at Messari said Coinbase should publicly buy tokens it considers undervalued; that comment is linked here. Some users pointed to Pollak’s own creator coin and questioned consistency.
A separate user, Kien Nguyen, said the community wants public acknowledgement when good coins appear rather than secret support; his post is linked here. Another trader criticized the amount used in an NFT purchase tied to the UpOnly podcast, arguing Coinbase would not distribute $1 million across many Base projects; that post is linked here.
For context, Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 — a scaling system that processes transactions off the main Ethereum chain to lower fees and increase speed. The article also notes Coinbase bought an NFT for $25 million that granted rights to future seasons of UpOnly, part of a $375 million deal for Echo.
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