Crypto can feel stale these days as the same names talk about the same old things. That's why it's refreshing to meet Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase engineer who built the company's popular Base blockchain. Pollak stands out because, unlike the recent influx of folks from Wall Street and Washington, D.C., looking to make a buck, he feels like he arrived from a frontier era of crypto—back when the industry was dominated by true believers.
Pollak is the subject of this charming feature by Niamh Rowe that describes how the Coinbase engineering whiz felt restless and nearly left but—after failing to persuade senior execs to turn the company into a DAO—finally hit on the idea of Base. The name describes a low-cost layer-2 blockchain that sits atop Ethereum and has already produced a number of popular apps, particularly in the realms of finance and social media. Most notably, Base pulled in $56 million of revenue last quarter for Coinbase—a major development since it shows the company has at last found a way to make money beyond trading fees and stablecoin interest.
Pollak himself is also a refreshing figure who aspires to stay humble and put the Quaker values of his childhood into what he builds. Crypto could use more of these types. Pollak is also open to experimenting, as I discovered when he asked if we could sell the feature article on Base in order to make it available for those who did not have a subscription to Fortune.
We went ahead and did just that and, already, hundreds of people have gone ahead and bought a blockchain rendition of the article. (You can do the same here using Metamask or another crypto wallet). This raises an interesting question about whether this could be a viable model for the media industry more broadly—one that involves letting crypto users purchase articles à la carte.
I still think a conventional Fortune subscription is the best bet for most people, not least because it provides access to splendid business features like this one about the gruesome accident that proved to be the undoing of GM's driverless car ambitions, or this one about the Cult of Costco. But for others, especially those deep into blockchain, it makes sense for publishers to put out stories in a crypto-native fashion. It helps that these folks have a wallet connected already and will like the convenience of paying this way.
For now, transacting on a blockchain still requires some technical know-how, and the user interface still doesn't compare with the likes of Amazon. But it's not crazy to imagine, five years from now, services like Base being more prevalent and selling access to bundles of crypto-related media in a package akin to Apple News. I have no idea if Base will succeed in the long term, or if it will be just another hyped crypto project that doesn't pan out. But it's refreshing to watch true believers like Pollak try new things.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
