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Meet the man who built it
These days, cryptocurrencies can seem outdated because the same names are talking about the same things. That’s why it’s refreshing to meet Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase engineer who created the company’s popular Base blockchain. Pollak stands out because, unlike the recent influx of people from Wall Street and Washington DC looking to make money, he feels like he came from a pioneering era of cryptocurrencies, a time when the industry was dominated by true believers.
Pollak is the subject of this charming feature Niamh Rowe describes how Coinbase’s engineering genius felt restless and nearly left but, after failing to convince senior executives to turn the company into a DAO, eventually came up with the idea for Base. The name describes a low-cost, layer-2 blockchain that’s built on Ethereum and has already produced a number of popular applications, including in finance and social media. Most notably, Base generated $56 million in revenue for Coinbase in the last quarter – a major development as it shows the company has finally found a way to make money beyond transaction fees and interest on stablecoins.
Pollak himself is also a refreshing personality who strives to remain humble and incorporate the Quaker values of his childhood into what he builds. Crypto could use more of that guy. Pollak is also open to experimentation, as I discovered when he asked if we could sell the feature article on Base to make it available to those who didn’t have a Fortune subscription.
We did just that, and already hundreds of people have purchased a blockchain version of the item. (You can do the same here (using Metamask or another crypto wallet). This raises an interesting question: could this be a viable model for the broader media industry to allow cryptocurrency users to purchase articles a la carte?
I still think that a conventional Fortune subscription is the best choice for most people, especially because it provides access to great business features like this one about the horrific crash that proved to be the downfall of GM’s driverless car ambitions, or this one about the Costco cult. But for others, especially those heavily involved in blockchain, it makes sense for publishers to publish items in a crypto-native way. It helps that these people already have a connected wallet and appreciate the convenience of paying that way.
For now, doing business on a blockchain still requires some technical know-how, and the user interface still isn’t comparable to Amazon’s. But it’s not crazy to imagine that in five years, services like Base will be more widespread, selling access to bundles of crypto-related media in a package similar to Apple News. I don’t know if Base will succeed in the long term, or if it’ll just be another crypto hype that doesn’t pan out. But it’s refreshing to see true believers like Pollak trying new things.
The story continues
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com