Jesse Pollak
Creator of Base
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Jesse Pollak (“jesse.base.eth”) Base, the Coinbase layer-2 that became the home of Brett, Toshi and the entire non-Solana memecoin scene, then launched his own creator coin and discovered exactly how that goes.
Who they are
Jesse Pollak is the creator and head of Base, Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network. He became the most visible individual advocate for onchain consumer applications, arguing repeatedly that memes are the actual onboarding mechanism for crypto rather than a distraction from it. If you hold any of the Base-native memes documented on this site, his product is the reason they exist.
History
Base launched in 2023 and rapidly became the second major memecoin venue after Solana, hosting Brett, Toshi, Higher, Degen and a large slice of the crypto-native meme economy. Pollak actively encouraged this, publicly framing memes as creating a Cambrian explosion of crypto onboarding at a time when most institutional voices were still pretending memecoins were an embarrassment. CoinDesk named him among its most influential people in crypto for 2025. In November 2025 he launched $JESSE, a creator coin issued from his own wallet, and the result was a case study in why founders should think twice about that: snipers reportedly extracted over a million dollars in the opening moments and Base community members accused the token of draining liquidity from other projects on the chain. On 15 July 2026 he conceded publicly that Base's onchain social and creator coin strategy had failed, pivoting the network's focus toward tokenisation, payments and AI agents.
Notes
- Created Base, Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2, which launched in 2023.
- Base became the second-largest memecoin venue after Solana, hosting Brett, Toshi, Higher and Degen.
- Publicly argued that memes are crypto's real onboarding mechanism, against the prevailing institutional view.
- Named by CoinDesk among crypto's most influential figures for 2025.
- Launched the $JESSE creator coin in November 2025 from his own wallet, drawing heavy backlash.
- Snipers reportedly extracted over $1.3 million from the $JESSE launch.
- Publicly declared the creator coin and onchain social strategy a failure on 15 July 2026.
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Official links
Links point to accounts we believe are official at time of writing. Always double-check a handle before trusting it. Impersonators are everywhere in crypto.