Base Strategic Major Adjustment: From Web2 Social Dream to Trading Priority, What Does It Reflect Behind

The official Base APP announced a significant strategic shift. According to an announcement by Base co-founder Jesse Pollak, the application will shift from its previous social focus to a “trading-first” approach and plans to introduce more high-quality assets on-chain. This is not just a simple feature optimization but a fundamental repositioning of the product direction, reflecting genuine changes in market demand.

User Feedback-Driven Strategic Adjustment

Why change direction

Base summarized three core user feedback points, which directly pointed to issues with the previous application:

• Overemphasis on social features, with a style close to traditional Web2, failing to fully support users’ diverse asset trading needs
• Widespread strong market demand for trading high-quality assets
• The information feed should comprehensively display on-chain activity, including applications, stocks, prediction markets, and social tokens

In simple terms, users want an application that can truly facilitate trading, not just a social network wrapped in a Web3 shell. This feedback is straightforward and hits hard—initially, the social focus design seemed misaligned with actual market needs.

How exactly will it be adjusted

Base’s response plan includes three directions:

1. Prioritize building trading features to drive capital flow into all rapidly growing asset categories
2. Introduce more high-quality assets on-chain
3. Adopt a “financial-first” user experience design, layering social features (such as copy trading, information flow trading, and leaderboards) on top of financial functionalities

The brilliance of this adjustment lies in not abandoning social features entirely but downgrading social to an auxiliary role, making copy trading and leaderboards serve trading. In other words, social is no longer the main course but a seasoning for trading.

What does this shift mean

Echoing the current ecosystem

Interestingly, several perpetual trading projects have already appeared within the Base ecosystem. According to the latest news, BasePerp is collaborating with Pundi AI to explore how AI data can empower on-chain perpetual trading. Meanwhile, the Base ecosystem’s Perp DEX project RollX has just completed its final point snapshot and is about to proceed with an airdrop. These developments indicate a clear phenomenon: trading demand is indeed heating up within the Base ecosystem.

The adjustment of the Base APP, to some extent, is an acknowledgment and embrace of this trend. Instead of passively watching ecosystem projects develop trading, it’s better to actively make trading a core part of the application.

Impact on ecosystem asset flow

“Introducing more high-quality assets on-chain” is a noteworthy statement. This means Base is no longer satisfied with its existing asset ecosystem but aims to actively attract more high-quality projects. Once trading functionality becomes the core attraction of the app, liquidity and trading depth will become key indicators. This could change how projects in the Base ecosystem gain attention and capital.

New ideas for user experience

The “financial-first” UX design itself is also worth noting. It implies that interface design, information display, and interaction flows will be optimized around trading. The addition of features like copy trading and information flow trading suggests that Base wants to turn trading into a social, shareable experience, even with leaderboard competition. It’s an interesting attempt: using social elements to drive trading engagement.

Personal opinion

From one perspective, this adjustment reflects a common dilemma in Web3 application design: social features can easily attract users but are hard to generate real value exchange. Base initially hoped to build a user base through social network effects but ultimately found that users care most about convenient trading and profit-making. This is a return from idealism to realism.

However, this change also introduces new challenges: prioritizing trading means competing with professional DEX and Perp platforms, a highly crowded space. Base’s advantage lies in its application entry point and user base, but whether it can truly excel in trading features remains to be seen over time.

Summary

Base’s strategic shift from “social-first” to “trading-first” is fundamentally a re-understanding of market demand. User feedback clearly points to trading needs, and the increasing number of Perp trading projects in the ecosystem confirms this. Although this adjustment means abandoning the original social dream, it may bring the application closer to the true value of Web3. The key moving forward is whether Base can develop a competitive trading experience and how this shift will impact other trading projects within the ecosystem.