The History of the Base Network: An Interview with Jesse Pollack

In 2021, Pollack, senior director of engineering at Coinbase, planned to leave the company after five years. However, his plans changed. In 2023, he created the Base network. Pollack, who led the consumer products engineering department, expanded his team from three to 250 people and achieved significant success.

When Pollack decided to leave, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong offered him a new task - integrating Coinbase into the blockchain. Pollack initially considered creating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that would make decisions on a number of issues. However, after being denied a request to allocate $1 billion and 60 employees to turn Coinbase into a DAO, he continued to look for other solutions.

Pollack has explored various ideas, including creating a separate Coinbase app store, identity software, and tapping into the advertising market. After a year and a half of research and experimentation, he settled on creating Base, a second-layer solution for Ethereum from Coinbase.

In the interview, Pollack emphasized the importance of community to the successful launch and development of Base. He compared the spirit of the Base developers to the atmosphere of Silicon Valley and noted that creating the next generation of the Internet is exactly what he feels destined for.

Jesse Pollack, a top manager at Coinbase, shared with Fortune reporters the details of the creation of the Base second-level network. This ambitious project aimed at scaling Ethereum took the team more than a year and a half. Pollack emphasized that the most important goal was to create a quality product for users.

In 2021, Pollack, senior director of engineering at Coinbase, planned to leave the company after five years. However, his plans changed. In 2023, he created the Base network. Pollack, who led the consumer products engineering department, expanded his team from three to 250 people and achieved significant success.

Pollack also noted that one of the key challenges for Coinbase remains attracting new users to the cryptocurrency sector. According to him, introducing people to the world of digital assets should not be associated with politics or ideology. The main goal of the company is to provide customers with a quality product that they will want to use.

At the end of March, the volume of transactions in the Base network reached a historical maximum of 2.27 million. In April, the transaction processing speed per second (TPS) increased to 400, which emphasizes the success and relevance of the new solution.

Pollack and his team continue to improve and develop Base, striving for further innovation and improvement in the quality of services provided.