Coinbase blockchain Base experiments with memecoins

input: This brought little recovery for the "Base is for everyone" memecoin or "content coin", whatever you want to call it.

Coinbase, the operator of a crypto exchange of the same name, has just celebrated the end of a years-long legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Now there are new controversies caused by bizarre memecoin activities by Base, the Coinbase blockchain that serves as the directory and basis for all transactions in the decentralized network of Coinbase users. There will even be a new court case against Coinbase in the US state of орегон.

A special feature that also plays an important role in the current events surrounding Base: it is a blockchain of so-called Layer 2 technologies (L2). The special thing about these blockchains is that they try to carry out as many transactions as possible outside the blockchain and only process absolutely necessary transactions on the blockchain itself. They add an additional layer to the actual transaction layer, which gives rise to the term "Layer 2". This allows payments to be processed within a few seconds, in contrast to the classic layer 1 blockchains, where even a single transaction takes significantly longer.

Base experiments with memecoins

But back to the latest Base controversy. It all started this Wednesday (April 16) when Base's Zora account published a post on Zora. Once known as a platform for trading NFTs, Zora is now looking to establish itself with a new model: A social network whose user interface is reminiscent of Instagram, with one key difference: authors can turn every single one of their posts into memecoins, others can purchase units of them and trade them. This is also where Base's L2 blockchain comes into play. It enables Zora users to buy and sell memecoin units of a Zora post in a matter of seconds.

Base representatives began experimenting with this possibility on Wednesday (April 16) by publishing an image on their Zora page. The content read, in black text on a white background: "Base is for everyone". – For the first time, the post was also a memecoin, which, unlike the other Zora posts from Base –, can also be sold directly. According to the crypto portal Dexscreener, the market capitalization in US dollars climbed to around 13 million US dollars after a few hours, only to plummet again immediately afterwards to around 2.6 million US dollars.

New post causes panic

What happened? Just one hour after publishing the post Base published another Zora post, which also automatically ran as a memecoin. This apparently caused owners of the first memecoin to panic. Many apparently felt reminded of the "pump and dump" scams used by various influencers in the recent past: a memecoin, often related to their own person, is created, the creator acquires shares very cheaply and promotes their coin using their own fame. As soon as the price has risen sharply, the creator sells all their shares and makes a substantial profit. While the other holders, mostly fans of the influencers, have to live with a massive slump in the price of the memecoin they purchased.

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This is probably what the buyers of the "Base is for everyone" memecoin feared when a new post and memecoin, this time a colorful Base advertising poster, went online. This put Jesse Pollak, member of the Coinbase management team and responsible for the Base blockchain, in need of an explanation. In response, he presented nothing less than a new era of the social media age, which he believes has begun.

Base manager raves about 'content coins'

In a video on Zora and X, he explains his vision of "content coins": social media content that can be purchased by others and with which the creators can also trade. Pollak enthused about completely new opportunities for creators to earn money with their content and profiled his approach as an alternative to traditional social media platforms, where the majority of the revenue goes to the platforms themselves. In this way, brands could also benefit from this "new" form of cryptocurrency, which are explicitly not the usual memecoins, Pollak believes. In an earlier Zora post, in which Base explained the advantages of its L2 blockchain, there is also talk of the company being remunerated with a fee of one US cent per Base transaction.

This brought little recovery for the "Base is for everyone" memecoin or "content coin", whatever you want to call it. Dexscreener still had a market capitalization of around USD 51,000 on Sunday afternoon.

And the legal situation for parent company Coinbase is also looking less than rosy. Paul Grewal, head of the legal department at Coinbase, announced on Friday that the Attorney General of the US state of орегон had announced that it was initiating proceedings against Coinbase to "pick up exactly where the SEC left off". The SEC had accused Coinbase of trading in unregistered investment products. The proceedings, which were closely followed by the entire industry, were recently officially discontinued. Even before that, the Coinbase CEO had strangely announced the end himself on X. The