Zora, a social media platform that automatically turns every post into a token on Coinbase’s Base chain, is launching its own token on Wednesday. This comes amid a “content coin” campaign from the creator of Ethereum layer-2 network Base, Jesse Pollak, with many criticizing the founder for his timing.
This all began on Wednesday last week, when Base’s official X account created a token on Zora called Base is for everyone which soared to a $16.9 million market cap then crashed 92% to $1.3 million within two hours. It would later hit a new all-time high then plummet again. This crash came as Base continued to create tokens on Zora as Pollak started to explain his “content coin” thesis.
Put simply, Pollak says that content coins are a way to revolutionize the social media economy by paying creators fees—a solution he says that fixes the problem of platforms not properly rewarding creators. His thoughts have now become Base’s official stance on the matter.
But detractors, like Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen, think that while Pollak’s heart is in the right place, the campaign may have come too soon to be fully accepted by the market.
Either way, according to Dune data, Zora activity exploded with daily traders spiking 601% from 40,638 the day before the campaign started to its all-time high on Sunday of 284,931. Throughout this period, Pollak continued to wave the flag for the content coin movement as he posted on social media, went on a press tour, and continued buying tokens.
That’s why on Sunday when Zora announced its token would launch on April 23, with its second snapshot capturing much of this newfound hype, many onlookers thought the timing was suspicious.
“I’m sure it is a coincidence that Zora is [launching its token] less than a week after the ‘coin everything’ hard shill campaign,” pseudonymous crypto trader IcoBeast posted on X, formerly Twitter. “The way this plays out is that people who coined things the last few days will get larger than expected allocations to the token and then get a nice pump into day one [Coinbase] listing.”
But Pollak refutes this, claiming that it was a coincidence after all.
“The truth is the effort to coin things from Base went 0 to 1 in [less than a] day,” he wrote on X. “The Zora team didn’t know we were coining anything until after it happened. [Zora creator Jacob Horne] had nudged me before paternity leave to do it and I told him I’d figure it out but it took a while.”
Later, he explained that while the campaign’s execution happened quickly, the team had thought “long and hard” about whether this type of coin was the future.
Speculation intensified when it was found out via CryptoRank that Coinbase took part in at least two funding rounds totalling $52 million, although exactly how much Coinbase invested remains unclear. The Zora tokenomics also reveal that 45% of the supply will go to the team and strategic contributors, many believing this includes Coinbase.
“Base is for everyone was actually just a marketing stunt to pump a token they invested into lmao,” crypto gaming content creator Jesus Martinez posted on X.
Not everyone was so skeptical about the Base and Zora relationship and have just been enjoying the app.
“All you had to do to make it was coining everything for a week only but instead you decided to clown everything from Jesse Pollak,” pseudonymous crypto trader Cbb0fe wrote on X, and was reposted by Pollak. “Get ready to cope hard.”
Neither Pollak, Base, nor Coinbase responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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