Key Takeaways
- Jesse Pollak is launching his own token, JESSE.
- Pollak pitches the new token as a “creator coin.”
- The Base founder previously courted controversy when he minted “Base is for everyone” (BASE) via an official Zora account.
Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base and a senior executive at Coinbase, is launching his own token, JESSE, which he has billed as a “creator coin.”
In Pollak’s model, creator coins complement “content coins,” i.e., the string of tokenized social media posts he mints on Zora, which have occasionally gone viral.
Jesse Pollak To Launch ‘Creator Coin’ JESSE
JESSE is not, Pollak insists, a memecoin in the pejorative sense.
Instead, he positions it as a “creator coin”— a supposedly enduring asset tied to his personal brand and influence.
The concept is hardly new.
Although influencer-endorsed tokens are generally associated with thin liquidity and pump-and-dump hype cycles, creators like Iggy Azalea have attempted to promote more sustainable models.
So far, however, few, if any, have managed to break the mold.
JESSE is scheduled to launch on Nov. 21 at 1:00 a.m. UTC.
Users will be able to mint directly from Pollak’s profile.
The Base founder has promised no pre-sale, no insider allocations, and no funny business, although history suggests the absence of overt malice rarely prevents the usual outcomes.
Pollak’s Track Record
JESSE isn’t Pollak’s first foray into memecoins or, in this case, “creator tokens.”
In April 2025, the official Base account posted the innocuous slogan “Base is for everyone” (BASE) on Zora, the on-chain social protocol that automatically mints posts as tradable tokens.
The post was later shared by Base on X.
The resulting token rocketed to a $17 million market cap within an hour, then cratered 90% just as quickly.
The incident generated significant controversy.
Many users saw it as Base officially endorsing a memecoin that tapped into rampant speculation about the Layer 2 network’s ambitions for its own utility token.
Pollak later admitted that he personally approved the post, defending it as an experiment and dismissing allegations of market manipulation.
He has continued to mint “content coins” on his personal Zora account ever since.
Influencer Tokens Almost Always Flop
While Pollak continues to double down on the narrative that content/creator coins represent a new paradigm for monetizing attention, the broader pattern is grimly predictable.
One study in 2024 found that out of 1567 memecoins promoted by 377 X influencers, 86% lost at least 90% of value within three months of endorsement.
Creator coin advocates seem to think that by adding their name to a token, they can somehow sustain traders’ interest for more than five minutes.
However, from Kanye West’s YZY to Ronaldinho’s STAR10, history is littered with examples of once-viral celebrity tokens that are essentially worthless today.
Even comparatively successful projects like TRUMP and Azalea’s MOTHER, which have maintained their market capitalization and trading volume over a longer period, are unlikely to ever revisit the heights achieved during their breakout frenzy.
Pollak’s entry into the space raises additional concerns about the propriety of Coinbase’s L2 architect dabbling in speculative token loops.
Given the aura of credibility granted by his role, even if he doesn’t profit off the project, should Pollak really be moonlighting as a dealer in the memecoin casino?
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James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
