Coinbase’s Base faces builder backlash over creator coin push

Base’s promotion of creator coins, largely through its close alignment with NFT marketplace Zora, is drawing mounting criticism from community members who say the strategy is alienating projects that helped bootstrap the network’s early momentum.

In recent months, Base has become the epicenter for “creator coins,” which are tokens tied to individual creators, posts or pieces of content, with Zora positioned at the center of that narrative.

Supporters argue the model represents a new onchain revenue stream for creators and a cultural on-ramp to crypto. Onchain data reflects also strong activity, with daily token mints on Base overtaking Solana in August of this year.

But frustration is growing among the Base community on X. Builders say Base is pushing a narrow, favored ecosystem while sidelining other Base-native projects with established communities and track records.

Jacek, who runs the degen token ecosystem on Base, vented his frustration on X with a post that echoed a negative shift in sentiment.

Jacek argued that Base’s marketing and social support has become increasingly selective, favoring Zora-linked initiatives while ignoring projects that previously delivered meaningful growth and liquidity to the chain.

“I’m genuinely disappointed by @base’s forced push around creator coins,” he wrote. “We still can’t even get the official Base X account to follow us, let alone acknowledge launches with a retweet or mention. It’s also not just us. Plenty of other projects feel the same way: that if you’re not part of the favored narrative, you effectively don’t exist. At that point, what is the incentive to build on Base?”

Jacek added that when degen bridged to Solana, they received immediate support from the official Solana X account and Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius.

The backlash highlights a broader tension facing Base as it struggles to bridge the gap between scaling adoption while maintaining positive sentiment with those building apps or tokens on Base.

In the short term, Base is perfectly fine as it continues to average more than 10 million transactions per day, according to Basescan, but waning sentiment could see an exodus to other chains like Solana or Sui.

Whether or not Base adapts to the shifting sentiment remains to be seen, but rival blockchains will be waiting in the wings to capitalize if the general mood among the Base builders continues to plummet.