Market data shows that the token’s market capitalization surged to $17.1 million within about an hour of its launch, but then rapidly plummeted by nearly 90% within the next 20 minutes, leaving a market cap of only $1.9 million. However, the token price quickly rebounded to surpass its previous high, and at the time of writing, the market cap was approximately $16 million.
This token was shared on April 16 by the official Base account on the social platform X, with a post containing the slogan: “Base is for everyone,” along with a link to Zora. Zora is a decentralized platform that transforms community posts into tokens, allowing users to engage in speculative trading of such content.
In response to this incident, Coinbase, as a proponent of the Base ecosystem, stated that the token is not the official token issued by Base. A Coinbase spokesperson clarified in an interview that Base has not issued any official tokens and has not sold this token. “Base is for everyone” refers to a post made by Base on Zora that was automatically converted into a token by the platform, rather than being actively issued by the team. The disclaimer on the token page states:
“This content is similar to the posts we’ve shared on X and should not be expected to yield any profits or price increases. Base will not develop or promote these tokens.”
Nevertheless, according to Zora’s data, Base has profited over $71,000 from the token, with a total trading volume exceeding $33 million. Base will also hold 10 million tokens from the total supply, promising never to sell them, with related revenue allocated for developer community grants.
The incident sparked strong backlash on the X community, with many users accusing Base of “self-sabotaging its credibility.” Former Riot Platforms researcher Pierre Rochard criticized the move as “short-sighted and exploitative.” AP Collective founder Abhishek Pawa stated that Base attempted to redefine meme coins as “content coins,” but the overall execution and market communication were a “complete failure.”
Base leader Jesse Pollack defended this on X: “Someone has to bring all online content on-chain, and if it’s us, I’m not afraid.” He believes that allowing creators to earn rewards through tokenized content is “the ultimate means of building a new economy,” but it requires rethinking the product and perception models.
However, subsequent revelations uncovered “malicious hoarding” behavior. Harrison Leggio, co-founder of the crypto startup g8keep, stated that two wallet addresses initially spent 2 ETH to hoard 21% of the total supply, quickly transferring and selling it for a total profit of about $300,000.
Additionally, Base subsequently published another activity post on Zora and generated a token named “Base @ FarCon 2025,” which also experienced extreme volatility.
