Coinbase’s Base App Shifts to Multichain Trading, Reducing Dependence on Its Own Chain

Coinbase’s Base app is moving beyond services built around its own blockchain and shifting to a multichain platform for trading assets across multiple networks.

The Block reported on Aug. 6 that Base creator Jesse Pollak said on the podcast “The Starting Block” that as the app evolves into a trading platform, the central role of the Base chain will naturally diminish.

Expanding to trade all assets means the app will have to handle assets and functions across multiple networks, Pollak said. The goal is to turn Base into a broad digital-asset trading platform rather than a service tied to a single chain.

Jordan “Cobie” Fish, who joined last month, now oversees the Base app. Fish is the founder of crypto crowdfunding platform Echo, which Coinbase acquired last year for about $375 million.

After handing day-to-day operation of the Base app to Fish, Pollak has focused on expanding the Base chain’s trading, payments and financial capabilities. The app will broaden into a multichain trading platform, while the Base chain will focus on improving liquidity and execution competitiveness.

Fish will concentrate on building the best trading product, Pollak said. Base, he added, must compete by offering the best assets, the deepest liquidity and the best execution environment.

The Base app already allows trading in assets from multiple crypto ecosystems. It plans to add prediction markets and perpetual futures products over time.

Assets deposited in decentralized finance on the Base chain total about $5 billion, and daily trading volume has exceeded $1 billion. Pollak said efforts by large companies such as Robinhood and Stripe to build their own blockchains validate Base’s strategy, adding that the industry is still in the early stages of a long effort to reshape the global financial system.