Op-Ed: Content Belongs Onchain — But Not Everything Needs a Coin

Yesterday, the official account for Base, a Layer-2 blockchain built by Coinbase, posted an image with a simple phrase on a publishing platform called Zora: “Base is for everyone.”

It wasn’t just a message. It was a transaction.

Because of how Zora works, the post instantly became a cryptocurrency. Ten million fungible tokens were minted, available for anyone to buy, sell, or trade. Within minutes, the token surged to a $13 million market cap. 

An hour later, Base did it again, turning another post — this time a conference poster — into a coin. Same mechanics. The move split attention between the two tokens, triggering confusion and a rapid sell-off. Within minutes, the first coin collapsed and lost more than 90 percent of its value.

It was a dynamic not unlike the recent Melania Trump memecoin, which cannibalized the momentum of her husband’s token. In both cases, overlapping narratives became competing assets — because in crypto, even brand loyalty has a liquidity pool

Thousands of users, many of them new to the Base ecosystem, were left holding tokens they barely understood, their money lost in the wreckage of what looked like a memecoin stunt launched by one of the most recognizable names in crypto.

Base is facing backlash after launching two tokens tied to onchain content

First came “Base is for everyone” — minted via Zora and quickly running to a $16M market cap

Then, about an hour later, @base dropped another coin for its FarCon poster — tanking the first coin’s chart… pic.twitter.com/Sl5FbvSfBf

— Now Media (@nowmedia) April 16, 2025

The backlash was immediate. But in a surprising twist, the token later rebounded and eventually hit a new all-time high, fueled by viral visibility and the speculative energy that powers much of the current memecoin market. What looked like a failed experiment turned into a rally.

Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive who leads Base, defended the move not as a mistake but as a mission.

“Someone has to normalize putting all of our content onchain,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “And I’m not afraid for it to be us.”

His reasoning draws from an increasingly popular thesis among crypto developers: that the internet is broken not because there’s too much content, but because we haven’t figured out how to value it properly. The current system — dominated by ad revenue, paywalls, and platform monopolies — leaves creators underpaid and overexposed. A better one, they argue, would allow content itself to become currency.

Jacob Horne, co-founder of Zora, laid out the philosophy behind this idea in an essay titled “Free and Valuable,” in which he proposes an internet where media is freely accessible but tied to tradable “content coins.” The more a piece of content spreads, the more valuable its coin becomes. Creators profit from ownership. Consumers speculate on what matters. Platforms serve as curators of liquidity.

not all coins are the same pic.twitter.com/qWEjyOexHH

— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) April 16, 2025

It’s a bold vision that speaks to the long-standing imbalance between attention and ownership in the creator economy. But yesterday’s rollout resembled something much more dreaded and familiar: a viral pump-and-dump.

As a media founder, journalist, and active builder on Base, I believe deeply in onchain content’s potential. I agree with Horne’s diagnosis. I share Pollak’s desire to build a freer, fairer web. But I also believe the execution fell short of the principle behind it.

There is a role for content coins — used thoughtfully, they can open new paths for creator patronage, collective ownership, and permissionless distribution. But launching them without explanation in a hyper-speculative memecoin climate was bound to backfire. Most people aren’t reading the fine print; they’re following signals. And when those signals come from an official account tied to Coinbase, the line between experimentation and endorsement blurs fast.

Base could’ve more obviously framed this as an open experiment. Instead, the post dropped without the proper context, and the “content coin” explanation came only after the crash. The stunt succeeded in capturing attention, but it came at the cost of trust. What could’ve been a meaningful test of media infrastructure ended up looking like just another rug pull.

The price recovery didn’t resolve the core issue; it reinforced it. This wasn’t deeper engagement or clearer understanding. It was speculation on attention, pure and simple. Yes, the token rebounded, but the trust didn’t. Many early participants still got burned, and the original intent got buried in the backlash.

Base is posting on Zora because we believe everyone should bring their content onchain, and use the tools that make it possible.

Memes. Moments. Culture.

If we want the future to be onchain, we have to be willing to experiment in public. That’s what we’re doing.

To be clear,…

— Base (@base) April 16, 2025

To Pollak’s credit, he’s approaching this with openness. In a thoughtful thread following the drop, he clarified his evolving position: content coins, in his view, represent a single piece of media, and should be valued as such—“no more, no less.” They’re meant to normalize onchain engagement by leveraging markets, not mimic the expectations of a traditional token project. Creators, he suggests, can benefit from trading fees and market discovery, while supporters fall into two buckets: collectors driven by emotional resonance, and traders driven by potential upside. Both, he argues, are valid.

I agree with much of that framing. Crypto offers real potential to reward cultural production in open, flexible ways. I also share his belief that the financialization of content isn’t inherently bad — it’s been gatekept for too long, and the tools and expectations needed to support it are still underdeveloped.

That’s why intent isn’t enough. We have to meet people where they are, not where we hope they’ll end up. What Base did might feel commonplace in the future, but in today’s speculative, reflex-driven market, it landed differently. Launching a token while carrying institutional weight comes with added responsibility. In crypto, norms aren’t written in whitepapers — they emerge from what the community tolerates, rewards, and rejects in real time. And in this context, even well-intentioned experiments can cause real harm.

I actually agree with @jessepollak on putting all content onchain

But tying a memecoin to every post isn’t it — esp when your followers get rekt

Not everything needs to be financialized

At @nowmedia, we’ve minted 250+ articles for provenance, not speculation

That’s the future

— medved (@mattmedved) April 16, 2025

Supporting meaningful media onchain requires more than viral mechanics — it calls for thoughtful infrastructure. That’s the idea behind Sovereignty, the web3 CMS we’ve built at Now Media to enable publishers to mint and distribute their content on the blockchain, not for speculation, but for provenance. In an era of accelerating AI and rampant misinformation, authenticating content is essential to preserving trust. Deployed on Base, Sovereignty takes a different approach than the content coins model: we use NFTs not because they’re fashionable, but because they’re fundamentally better suited to the nature of media — singular, contextual, and expressive.

Like Jesse, we believe that publishing content onchain should become normalized. One day, it will be as routine as publishing to the web. Through Sovereignty, we’ve already published more than 250 articles onchain — journalism, analysis, and cultural commentary that deserve to outlast the platforms hosting them. While none of these works have been offered for sale (yet), collectible content is a core part of Sovereignty’s toolkit. We believe media can carry value, and that creators should be able to capture it. But that doesn’t mean every piece needs to be financialized. After all, not everything worth publishing is meant to be collected.

Before co-founding Now Media, I saw the power of collectible content firsthand in legacy media. At Billboard, we generated seven figures in revenue from a BTS box set of print magazines by tapping into their global fanbase. As Editor-in-Chief of Spin, our Billie Eilish cover drew an overwhelming wave of interest from fans who wanted to collect it. The only problem? It was digital. And it was 2019 — I didn’t know what an NFT was yet. But the desire for ownership, for cultural artifacts that endure, was already clear.

“Like Jesse, we believe that publishing content onchain should become normalized. One day, it will be as routine as publishing to the web.”

MATT MEDVED

That distinction matters. This isn’t about declaring one model superior to another — it’s about recognizing that content isn’t one-size-fits-all. Fungible tokens can amplify distribution and accelerate discovery, but they also risk flattening media into interchangeable units of speculation. NFTs, for all their baggage, offer a format more aligned with works whose value lies in meaning, not momentum.

By tying a fungible token to each post, Base and Zora risk conflating engagement with price action. What began as an effort to rethink content monetization became, in practice, a memecoin drop. Disclaimers aside, when a Coinbase-linked account launches a token that pumps and dumps within hours, it doesn’t just erode trust in the product — it undermines the principle behind it.

There is still enormous potential in what Base and Zora are trying to achieve. But financializing every post, especially in a speculative environment, risks undermining trust before that trust has been earned.

Yes, let’s put content onchain. Let’s build an internet that pays creators fairly and preserves their work. But let’s also remember: not everything needs a coin.