Coinbase CEO Debates Base App’s Strategic Focus
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is exploring completely different paths for the newly rebranded Base App, questioning whether or not its focus must be on finance, social options, or each.
In a Dec. 18 publish, Armstrong famous that the platform at the moment capabilities as each a pockets and a social hub. Nonetheless, he additionally admitted he’s listening to completely different takes on whether or not that’s the appropriate path for the app.
“Ought to Base app give attention to being a self-custodial model of Coinbase (buying and selling and monetary companies oriented) or lean into content material/creator cash and social? (Or is that this a false dichotomy.) It is a key query I heard from folks popping out of the product occasion yesterday,” stated Armstrong, referring to the Coinbase System Replace 2025, the place the trade unveiled a set of recent merchandise.
“The Base app is the entrance door to the onchain economic system, bringing collectively the perfect of defi and new socialfi instruments. We aren’t selecting one path over the opposite; we’re constructing a house for each to thrive. We’re excited to see the group form this journey as we convey seamless onchain experiences for the subsequent billion customers,” a spokesperson for Base instructed The Defiant.
Rethinking the Tremendous App
The Base App marks a big change from Coinbase Pockets, which was beforehand a standalone self‑custody pockets. Over the summer time, the trade rebranded Coinbase Pockets as an “the whole lot app” that mixes pockets options with buying and selling and social feeds.
The concept, because the Coinbase CEO defined beforehand, was to create a “tremendous app” like these standard in Asia, similar to WeChat and Alipay, which provide a number of companies in a single app.
Armstrong’s query to the group comes only a few weeks after Farcaster, a blockchain-based social protocol co‑based by Coinbase alumni, introduced a pivot from a social network-first technique to focus extra on on-chain buying and selling.
Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero stated that the crew determined to “double down” on wallets after concluding {that a} social-first strategy hadn’t delivered sustainable progress.
