Base Protocol Founder to Take Over Coinbase Wallet and Join Exchange’s Exec Team

Key Takeaways

• Base protocol lead Jesse Pollak announced that he would be taking on an additional role as the lead for Coinbase Wallet.
• Base under Pollak has become one of the fastest-growing layer-2 protocols, only behind Arbitrum One.
• The crypto community lauded Pollak’s appointment.

Jesse Pollak, the creator of Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base, has been tapped to take the reins at Coinbase Wallet while maintaining his leadership role at Base.

The appointment, seen as a strategic effort to bolster the two entities’ symbiotic relationship, reflects a shared ambition to make it “dead simple for the world to come on-chain.”

Pollak to Lead Coinbase Wallet Along With Base

Pollak took to X to announce his promotion. He noted that Coinbase’s focus has always been to make on-chain onboarding seamless. With Pollak at the helm of two of Coinbase’s key products, he hopes to onboard a “billion people and a million builders on-chain.”

“Coinbase Wallet will continue to work across the entire onchain economy, and we’ll start the work of embodying the other Base values in even more ways,” Pollak wrote.

The crypto community lauded Coinbase’s decision to appoint Pollak as the head of the crypto exchange’s wallet department, given his impressive resume as the layer-2 protocol head. Social media users said that Coinbase wallet has significantly improved, but Pollak’s appointment will “supercharge it.”

Base Superiority Under Pollak

Since its launch, Base has become  a top-tier player in the Ethereum Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Developed on the OP Stack, Base’s focus on ease of onboarding and developer-friendly tools has paid off, attracting high-profile partners such as Sushiswap, Uniswap, OpenSea, and SeamlessFi.

Pollak’s leadership has been instrumental in Base’s success, leveraging the protocol’s EVM compatibility to facilitate seamless migration of existing Ethereum-based projects. This has allowed Base to quickly rise to prominence, distinguishing itself in a crowded layer-2 market.

Thanks to its capabilities and competitively low fees, Base has become a go-to platform for decentralized applications, including DeFi protocols and NFT marketplaces. Pollak’s vision for building a robust ecosystem has resonated with the crypto community, which has welcomed his appointment as head of Coinbase Wallet.

By leveraging Base’s success, Pollak is now poised to drive further integration between the on-chain economy and Coinbase’s off-chain wallet. The crypto community is closely watching this development, anticipating further innovation and growth in the layer-2 space.

Base Boasts of the second-largest TVL and 30% Market Share

Base is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing protocols, with a Total Value Locked (TVL) of over $2.24 billion, cementing its position as the one of largest protocols in terms of TVL.

In the layer-2 ecosystem, Base ranks as the second-largest protocol by TVL, surpassed only by Arbitrum.

While it trails in TVL, Base is ahead in most other key metrics compared to its peers. If it maintains its current growth rate, it may soon surpass the likes of Ethereum, Binance, and Solana, positioning itself as the top DeFi protocol.

Top Layer-2 protocols by TVL. Source: CoinGecko

Besides its staggering TVL, Base also boasts one of the fastest transaction processing speeds, averaging 58.53 TPS, making it one of the fastest layer-2 networks. 

Source: Base

By extension, daily transactions on Base have skyrocketed from a few thousand to a staggering 4.8 million, driven by the protocol’s hallmark low fees and near-instant transaction processing. Meanwhile, the user base has also witnessed explosive growth, swelling to over 60 million users, a testament to the layer-2 protocol’s adoption and appeal in the market.