Original Title: "Scaling Onchain Culture with Base and Zora"

Original Author: @sakshimiishra, Castle Labs

Original Translation: BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's purchase of Balaji's creator token on the Zora platform has once again brought Zora and content tokens into the market spotlight.

The Zora network has shown strong fundamentals, with its token price stable in the $0.115–$0.12 range, and on-chain content creation and distribution activities remaining active. With the dual driving forces of Base App integration and a resurgence in market interest, Zora's potential as a core experimental ground for the "content economy" is becoming more prominent. Next, we will delve into Zora's and Base's recent development trajectories from the perspectives of market trends, on-chain activities, and ecosystem evolution.

Over the past year, amidst fierce competition in the Layer 2 arena, Base has successfully broken through, attracting over $49 billion in total value locked (TVL) and nurturing a rich DeFi, NFT, and rapidly growing SocialFi application ecosystem.

However, for Base, TVL is just the tip of the iceberg. Its focus is actually on "crypto culture."

This strategic direction is bearing fruit, as the number of tokens issued on Base recently surpassed Solana, largely due to Coinbase reshaping its wallet into the Base App, a crypto "super app" tailored for the creator economy.

Through deep integrations with SocialFi platforms like @Farcaster_xyz, @Zora, @Clankeronbase, and mini-apps like @noicedotso, the Base App transforms social content into tradable on-chain assets, reshaping the way creators monetize and interact with their communities.

This is the road of on-chain cultural expansion that Base and Zora are jointly driving.

Base Brief History

Base is a layer-two blockchain built by Coinbase on the Optimism's OP Stack, with the goal of making Ethereum faster, cheaper, and more user-friendly.

As of mid-2025, Base has achieved:

· $4.9 billion TVL

· 24.4 million monthly active addresses

· Peak 161.92 TPS

· Over 276 million transactions in the last 30 days, far exceeding most L2s

· An active ecosystem consisting of DeFi, NFT, and SocialFi projects

Furthermore, events like "Base Onchain Summer" further demonstrate that Base aims not only to scale Ethereum but also to lay the groundwork for millions of creators and communities to enter Web3.

Base App: From Infrastructure to Cultural Hub

As Base transitions from mere blockchain infrastructure to a "cultural hub," it places the creator economy at the core. In July 2025, the new version of the Base App was launched. This was not just a rebranding but also signified Coinbase's evolution from single-chain support to empowering developers, creators, and regular users globally within a complete ecosystem, enabling them to monetize on-chain directly and own their works.

Coinbase's vision for the Base App is clear: to build the "super app" of the crypto world.

The core features of the Base App include:

· Wallet

· Social Feed

· Payments

· Mini-Apps

· AI Assistant

You can think of it as Apple Pay + decentralized social media. Once users log in, the system will automatically generate a smart wallet, eliminating the need for cumbersome mnemonic phrase backups.

What is a Smart Wallet?

A smart wallet is a Passkey-based self-hosted on-chain wallet embedded directly within the app, focusing on a "seamless onboarding" experience. No browser plugins, no frequent app switching, making the entire experience smoother.

The real highlight of Base lies in its SocialFi integration. By integrating platforms like Zora and Farcaster, Base is attempting to break the traditional Web2 platforms' control over creators, enabling them to truly own their content.

The Flaws of the Web2 Creator Economy

In the Web2 world, creators face tough choices:

· Subscription models: Require consistent output, lack personal touch, and often gate content behind a paywall.

· Advertising: Requires a massive audience to be meaningful but significantly impacts user experience.

· Tips: Scattered and unsustainable, making it challenging to support long-term creation.

Even worse, the platform economy heavily favors the platforms themselves. As shown in the diagram below, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X take 85-95% of the value, leaving only 5-15% for creators. Even YouTube's relatively "better" 55/45 split still gives nearly half of the revenue to the platform.

This severe imbalance is precisely what Base's new SocialFi strategy aims to change. The social layer operates on Farcaster, where posts can be instantly minted as tradable ERC20 tokens through Zora.

Content Tokenization is a simple yet powerful idea.

Every post, image, or video can be minted into a tradable ERC-20 token, known as "Content Coin." This transforms social media interactions into liquid, ownable assets, creating new monetization opportunities for creators and allowing fans to directly participate in the success of the content.

In addition to direct transactions, mini-apps like Noice also support tipping.

So far, the total tipping amount on Noice has exceeded $250,000, providing creators with an additional source of income.

Creators can also earn money through the following means:

· Transaction fees from Content Coin (0.5%)

· Holding 1% of the Content Coin supply for self-sale

· Weekly reward distribution: for example, by the end of July, Base App distributed $10,000 USDC to over 2,900 accounts

Base's Creator Incentive Mechanism

On the Base App, each post is minted into a "Content Coin," with a fixed total supply of 1 billion coins. Of these, 10 million coins (1% of the total supply) are directly allocated to creators, giving them ownership from the start and allowing them to benefit as their content gains popularity. Additionally, there is a "Creator Coin" tied to their profile, serving as a tradable asset representing the creator's own value.

The entire incentive model is encoded in smart contracts, automatically executed through fee splits, with all Content Coin transactions incurring a 1% fee, distributed as follows:

· 0.5% to the creator

· 0.3% to the referrer (0.15% to the transaction referrer, 0.15% to the content creation referrer)

· 0.2% Allocated to the Zora Protocol

So far, this mechanism has rewarded creators with over 3500 ETH.

Transactions of Creator Coins take place through the Uniswap V3 liquidity pool, allowing users to buy and sell instantly. However, insufficient liquidity remains a challenge for many small to mid-sized creators. Compared to traditional platforms (such as X, which takes more than 85% of the revenue), Zora's system enables creators to retain over 50% of the value and offers additional profit opportunities.

What sets Zora apart from previous attempts is its adoption of a "content-first" approach. Rather than merely turning creators into "meme coins," it directly ties tokens to the content they create, such as images, text, or videos. When a creator uploads an image, they can name the corresponding token to directly reflect the content itself. This design elevates the token's value beyond mere hype, making it more intrinsic and closely linked to the creator's expression.

Some of the applications already integrated into Base App include:

· Zora: Provides content tokenization capabilities, allowing users to transform social media posts (such as text, images, videos) into tradable ERC-20 "content coins" and automatically access the Uniswap liquidity pool. Creators receive 10 million tokens per post and a 1% share of transaction fees, making Zora a core platform for content creation and monetization.

· Farcaster: Serving as social infrastructure, it offers a decentralized user interaction protocol, including posting and commenting. Integrated with Base App, it provides a platform for sharing and interacting with tokenized content.

· Clanker: An AI-based tool for rapidly issuing meme coins through Farcaster. Users can simply @clanker on Farcaster to create ERC-20 tokens on Base and utilize its social integration to drive community-driven token discovery and deployment.

· Noice: A Farcaster Mini App, focusing on tipping and interaction, serves as a gateway to the Farcaster economy. It enhances user engagement through content tipping, complementing Zora's tokenization feature with Farcaster's social layer. Noice's impact was highlighted when its founder attended the Base TBA conference.

How They Work Together:

· The Base App combines Zora's tokenization technology with Farcaster's social protocol, enabling users to create, share, and trade tokenized content.

· Clanker simplifies the token creation process through Farcaster's social channels, while Noice enhances interaction through tipping.

This combined effect drives the formation of network effects, continuously attracting creators and traders to join.

Base App as a Catalyst for ZORA

The integration of the Base App with Zora has propelled the surge in ZORA price and on-chain activity, with significant growth seen across trading volume and active creators. This momentum is further fueled by the community's adept operations. Under the leadership of Base founder Jesse Pollak, coordinated Farcaster promotion and grassroots hype marketing have attracted thousands of new creators and traders.

Data speaks for itself:

· The daily active unique creator count on Zora surged from 2,000 on July 16, 2025 (the day before the Base App launch), to 22,500 on July 27.

· ZORA has risen 600% in the past 30 days, with increased visibility and liquidity from its listing on Binance. Its all-time high price reached $0.14, marking a 1400% increase.

· On August 4, the token supply on Base reached 51,575, surpassing Solana's Pump.fun (which has only 4,173), making it the first time since early 2023 that a chain has exceeded Solana in daily token issuance.

The branding and influence of Coinbase have also amplified Zora's growth, from CEO Brian Armstrong's "Base Shake" meme coin to Pollak's high-frequency exposure on Farcaster, the community continues to receive reasons to "create, transact, participate."

Risks: Hype, Speculation, and the Limitations of Patterns

As mentioned earlier, creators have four main ways to earn money, including selling 1% of their allocated content coin. However, this has also raised many questions, with the most common being the sustainability issue. Is this platform really building a long-term creator economy, or is it just another speculative playground?

In April 2025, Zora airdropped 1 billion tokens to 2.4 million wallets. Although intended to celebrate growth, many tokens were valued even lower than the gas fee, with no governance function. Critics called it "just for fun" and believed it dispersed long-term value building.

Its token distribution also raised concerns:

· 38.9% Team/Treasury

· 26.1% Investors

This highly concentrated holding structure has raised concerns about centralization, especially for a platform that claims to empower creators.

There has been a lot of debate surrounding the sustainability of the Base App's economic model.

One criticism describes Zora as a "super-casino-style purgatory," stating that the Content Coin is more like a meme coin with no intrinsic value, and its transactions rely more on social hype than genuine content interaction. In this zero-sum game framework, Zora is seen less as a creator tool and more as a short-term speculative game.

After all, the creator model has appeared in the NFT era before and mostly ended in failure.

During this time, Solana co-founder Toly and Base founder @Jessepollak also engaged in a public heated debate on X.

The summary of this "philosophical" debate is as follows:

Toly's View

· Toly questions the value of Zora tokenizing social media posts, even sarcastically asking, "lol wut? Can tokens on Zora share in creators' future cash flows?" He refers to these tokens as "digital trash," comparing them to speculative NFTs or loot boxes in mobile games.

· He believes that Zora tokens lack intrinsic value because they do not confer upon holders any rights to creators' future income (such as ad revenue sharing), and their value is entirely speculative.

· Toly even suggests that if Jesse truly believes in their intrinsic value, Coinbase should buy these "almost worthless" tokens to prove their financial utility.

Jesse's Response

· Jesse emphasizes that the content itself has intrinsic value, much like art, and should not be measured solely by immediate monetization. He argues that Zora's tokens, through integration with Base App, can reallocate value to creators, and their "fundamentals" are linked to creators' activity.

· He portrays Zora as an "infinite game," where community-driven actions continuously create systemic value, beyond mere speculative trading, thereby empowering millions of creators.

User Reactions Show Divergence

· Some criticize Toly's position as hypocritical, given that Solana itself has been caught up in the Meme coin narrative.

· Others see this as a clash of blockchain philosophies: Base emphasizes the creator economy, while Solana leans more towards the speculative market.

However, beyond the philosophical debate, Base App itself has raised some notable issues:

· Sharp Decline in Trading Volume: The trading volume in the first week of August saw a significant drop from a peak of $550 million to $77 million (Source: TokenTerminal).

· Lack of Transparency: This includes issues such as suspected insider wallet transactions, lack of transparency in information disclosure, etc., seriously damaging trust. Zora's "Ethos" page has also received negative reviews, further affecting community sentiment.

· Poor User Experience: Users commonly complain about the slow posting speed on the Base App, leading to a bad user experience.

· Content Moderation Controversy: Last week, the top token on the Base platform turned out to be a pornography website, sparking a lot of criticism (Source: Decrypt).

However, supporters believe that this is just a necessary phase for any viral product. At least for now, their judgment does not seem unfounded: in the second week of August, ZORA's market performance accelerated once again.

After a few days of declining trading volume, there was a rapid rebound in the second week.

Savvy money and whale funds started pouring in, driving ZORA up by 46% in a single day, setting a new historical high of $0.14.

The platform's recent iterations are also ongoing, including "comprehensive acceleration" and performance enhancements on the Android side.

The real question now is: Can Zora's model emerge from the shadow of speculation, build long-term trust, achieve scalable expansion, all while not diluting its core narrative of "on-chain creator ownership"? Or will it eventually be seen as another "rebranded meme coin platform"?

Future Path and Imagination Space

Despite ongoing controversies, Zora is still in its early stages but has the potential to reshape the value system and monetization logic of digital content.

Currently, it has brought together 421,000+ creators and nearly 3 million collectors, and has achieved seamless scalability through Base's OP Stack. Coupled with Coinbase's massive user base, the potential for future penetration is significant.

Some noteworthy trends include:

· Deeper integration with Farcaster, strengthening the "social + economic" integrated interaction.

· Launch of the Coins SDK, lowering the barrier for developers to build on the Content Coin model.

· Mobile-first expansion targeting the global market, entering regions where creator monetization is not yet fully tapped.

Conclusion: A New Layer of On-chain Culture?

Base initially started as a faster, cheaper Ethereum L2 technology solution. However, with the development of the Base App, it is evolving into a larger positioning: an economic layer of culture, creativity, and community. Through this reshaping, Coinbase also clearly signals a shift from a centralized exchange towards a more decentralized Web3 infrastructure.

Base's market strategy is clear: build infrastructure → attract creators → let on-chain culture compound on its own. Zora plays a central role in this: turning content into tokens and creators into stakeholders.

Risks still exist. The hype will eventually fade, trust-building takes time, and the speculative nature of content tokens may attract some but deter others. Centralized token distribution and transparency failures must also be addressed.

However, if Zora and Base can refine their models, enhance user experience, and achieve better alignment in incentive mechanisms, they do have an opportunity to reshape digital ownership.

An unresolved question is: Will content tokens be the next evolution of creator monetization, or will they ultimately be just another experiment in the long history of crypto hype?

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