When an unknown memecoin called “Base is for everyone” suddenly launched on Zora and surged to over $17 million in market cap in less than an hour, no one expected it to spark a minor PR crisis for Coinbase, the company leading the Base infrastructure.
Although Coinbase quickly denied any involvement in the controversial token launch, the community raised a pressing question: Was this an unintended mishap, or a sign of the blurry lines between Web3 and financial meme tools?
Base – When the Biggest Blockchain Rug-pulled
The incident began on April 16, when the official Base account on X posted a simple Zora Create message: “Base is for everyone.”
This format allows users to mint interactive content as NFTs on Zora. Unexpectedly, immediately after the post went live, a memecoin with the same name was automatically launched, triggering a chain reaction among retail crypto investors.
Within minutes, the token “Base is for everyone” started trading actively on the Base network. Its market cap skyrocketed to $17.1 million in just 69 minutes after mint.
However, only 20 minutes later, the market cap plummeted by nearly 90%, dropping to under $2 million. Some speculators cashed out early and walked away with hundreds of thousands in profits, while most others ended up holding the bag.
According to on-chain data, the top three wallets held 47% of the total token supply, an extremely concentrated distribution, even by memecoin standards. These holders dumped their tokens at the top, causing the entire market to collapse within minutes.
The price chart clearly illustrates a classic pump-and-dump pattern, with towering green candles followed by a sharp and sudden crash.Notably, the collapse didn’t happen because of pulled liquidity – it happened because whales quickly accumulated tokens and then dumped them on smaller holders.. The initial liquidity was extremely thin, amplifying volatility and making the token an ideal vehicle for short-term trading by larger players.
“Tokenized Content Is the Future”
Jesse Pollak, head of the Base project at Coinbase, didn’t shy away from the controversy. In a response on X, he stated that tokenized content is a crucial part of Web3’s development roadmap.
“We’re moving toward a world where every post, video, and meme can have real financial value. It’s up to the community to decide how they want to engage,” Pollak wrote.
From his perspective, the recent incident was not a systemic failure, but rather a sign of the democratization of ownership and creativity. However, he also acknowledged that “we’re still learning” and emphasized the need to better clarify the line between official accounts and individual actions within organizations.
try to argue against content coins from first principles.
if a video on tiktok has millions of views, it has value.
why should a single platform control that value?
why shouldn’t that value be explicit?
why shouldn’t the creator benefit from that value?seems good to me.
— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) April 16, 2025
Still, for many in the community, the event revealed a harsh truth.
“When it comes to financial benefits, it’s no longer culture, whether it’s onchain or not,” shared Pink Brains on X.
Seen through this lens, Web3’s creative freedom increasingly takes a back seat to financial speculation – where everything, even memes and culture, gets repackaged as a tool for profit.
Coinbase Responds — But Is It Enough?
Shortly after the controversy erupted, a Coinbase spokesperson responded: “That token is not an official Base product and has no affiliation with Coinbase.”
They explained that Zora’s system automatically generates a token whenever someone mints a post using the “Create” format. By default, the system issues this ERC-20 token and lists it on Zora or AMMs within the Base network.
However, one detail that sparked further suspicion was that a wallet linked to Base received 10 million tokens, or 1% of the total supply. Coinbase later clarified that it wouldn’t sell those tokens and would redirect all trading fees to support Base’s developer community.
Still, many in the crypto community found the explanation unconvincing, especially since Base’s official account directly shared the post that triggered the token launch.
As a publicly listed company, Coinbase’s involvement in what many see as a “financial accident” has significantly dented the credibility of the Base ecosystem.
Community backlash was swift. Prominent KOLs in crypto criticized Coinbase/Base for irresponsibly appearing to endorse a speculative memecoin. From Cobie to on-chain analysts like Lookonchain, waves of tweets, memes, and harsh commentary spread rapidly. Some even labeled it “a rug pull promoted by Coinbase.”
The result? A major reputational hit for Base, which had positioned itself as a user-friendly, transparent Layer 2 for the masses.
Read more: Is Coinbase Safe & Trustworthy in 2025?
This incident also raises serious concerns about content approval processes on official accounts, especially in an environment where a single tweet can lead to millions in user losses.
Ultimately, Coinbase didn’t just make a misstep – it sent a warning to all Web3 infrastructure builders: In a world where on-chain actions quickly become financialized, projects need to define clear boundaries between official products and individual experiments from the outset.
Conclusion
The “Base is for everyone” memecoin incident went far beyond a typical case of speculative mania – it exposed a deeper flaw in how Web3 organizations, especially regulated entities like Coinbase, manage their onchain presence and communications. In a space where a single tweet can trigger millions in inflows or losses, the line between creative freedom and financial responsibility is becoming dangerously thin.
For Base, this wasn’t just a short-term PR stumble; it was a wake-up call. As the Web3 ecosystem continues to blur the boundaries between content and capital, infrastructure projects must draw clear distinctions between official initiatives and experimental user-generated actions or risk undermining the very trust they aim to build.
Read more: Coinbase vs Binance 2025: Which Exchange is Better?
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