Base is for Everyone Token Debuts With a Contentious Front-Running Campaign

Token debuts remain a contentious issue, often criticized for their poor execution that allows individuals, supposedly armed with insider information

Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 solution Base on Wednesday announced its "Base is for everyone" token on Zora, an on-chain social network, which is now mineable and can be traded on DEXs.

The token, which was created via Zora's functionality to mint tokens out of any content posted on its network, quickly drew attention and sparked discussion among crypto users on X.

At around 19:30 UTC, Base announced the debut of its token. The token price quickly surged to over $15 million in market capitalization, with at least three crypto addresses seen making huge profits from the token.

"3 wallets bought a large amount of "Base is for everyone" before @base posted and sold them, making a profit of ~$666K," blockchain sleuth Lookonchain said on X.

The wallet address 0x0992 invested 1.5 ether (ETH) to purchase 256.39 million units of the token at 12:30 PM UTC and sold the entire coin stash for 108 ETH following the official announcement, pocketing a profit of $168,000 in just over an hour.

Another wallet address 0x5D9D invested 1 ETH ($1,580) and walked away with $266,000 profit, and another address, labelled 0xBD31, made $231,800.

The token's market capitalization later tanked to less than $2 million as Base announced another coin for its FarCon poster, which sucked out liquidity from the Base is for everyone token and left entrants in the latter with a large loss.

However, valuations have recovered since then, with the market capitalization of Base is for everyone topping the $18 mark as of writing, according to data source DEX Screener. Base creator Jesse also greenlighted the token, saying, "The goal is to ‘normalize putting all content on-chain.'"

Base only posted on Zora

Coinbase clarified that the Base is for everyone coin is not the official cryptocurrency of Base and the layer 2 did not directly sell these. "Base posted on Zora, which automatically tokenizes content," Coinbase's spokesperson told CoinDesk.

The legal disclaimer on Zora suggested the same, with Base also clarifying its position on X, saying, it shall never sell these tokens.

"To be clear, Base will never sell these tokens, and these are not official network tokens for Base, Coinbase, or any other related product. The content we share is creative, and we're going to keep bringing culture on-chain," Base said.

The rapid boom-bust cycles in these smaller tokens often create a net negative wealth effect, allowing a select few to profit significantly while the majority face losses. This often leads to liquidity drain from the broader digital assets market.

The larger the boom-and-bust cycles associated with these coins, the stronger the negative wealth effect.

For instance, this year's debut of LIBRA and TRUMP tokens destroyed millions in investor wealth, marking a major price top in bitcoin and the broader crypto market.