Tokenizing Content with Jesse Pollak

Base is for Everyone* Including The Haters. This is not a memecoin. It's a contentcoin. The market will value it as such. Don't buy with money you're not willing to lose.

https://zora.co

Over the past week, crypto Twitter has been ablaze with speculation over a new phenomenon: Content Coins. The spark? A seemingly innocuous post minted on Zora by a team member from Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2. But the market interpreted it as something far more significant—perhaps even the long-rumored native token of the Base chain.

Prices surged. The token in question reached several million market cap within hours. The creator reportedly made over $100,000 in trading fees and mints. Then the market turned. More content coins began flooding in, saturating the narrative. Prices crashed. Many began labeling the episode a textbook pump-and-dump.

But underneath the volatility lies something more meaningful: the possibility that we're witnessing the birth of a new primitive for the onchain creator economy.

Minting content on Zora is nothing new. What made this case different was the provenance: the creator was closely tied to the Base team. That added a layer of perceived legitimacy, especially in a space where tokens often signify governance, utility, or future alignment.

Without an official announcement, the community filled the vacuum with speculation. Was this the Base coin? Was it a stealth drop? A new kind of airdrop mechanism? A test of community response?

All of this led to a fast inflow of capital. Early buyers bet on virality and exclusivity. But as more tokens followed—many with lower effort or unclear value—the excitement quickly turned into confusion, and then derision.

Jesse Pollak, the leader behind Base, later addressed the situation with a candid post on X:

"We started coining @base's content because we believe that unlocking coins for more use cases is a key next unlock for the onchain economy and a powerful tool for helping creators earn from their creativity."

He acknowledged the cultural whiplash: crypto is accustomed to coins having price-driven, functional utility—whether governance or yield. Content coins challenge that by being expressive, narrative, and speculative in a different way. Jesse apologized for promoting a piece that included provocative language, and reaffirmed his support for artistic experimentation onchain.

Yet the damage—or rather, the disruption—was done. The market had already reacted. And in doing so, it surfaced a much deeper set of questions.

A Content Coin is exactly what it sounds like: a token that represents a piece of content. Unlike NFTs, which are typically unique and scarce, Content Coins are fungible. They can be traded, minted en masse, and speculated on—just like any ERC-20 token.

But that raises the fundamental question: what value does the token actually represent?

There are three major angles:

1. Speculative Curation – Buying early into a piece of content that could later go viral, signaling quality through price action.

2. Patronage & Support – Giving creators financial reward by minting their token, similar to tipping or subscribing.

3. Social Signal & Membership – Holding a content token as a badge of alignment, fandom, or future interaction with the creator.

All three are valid narratives. But none are yet dominant.

Content Coins introduce a novel form of signal in the onchain ecosystem—one that goes beyond likes, retweets, or simple engagement. While most social interactions are low-cost expressions of interest, minting or purchasing a Content Coin requires real economic commitment.

This transforms passive attention into active alignment.

In that sense, buying a content token is more than support—it's a wager on its cultural or narrative relevance. The token becomes a form of speculative curation. Those who discover compelling content early and invest in it are, in a way, betting on its future virality or importance. If others follow, demand increases, and the token’s value rises. In this model, the audience doesn’t just consume content—they help validate and amplify it through capital.

It's similar to a prediction market: early buyers are rewarded if their judgment proves accurate. But this dynamic only works under certain conditions—namely, when there’s consensus around the meaning of the signal and some form of scarcity or limitation in supply. Fungible tokens, by design, are infinite unless capped, which can weaken the strength of the signal and open the door to dilution or manipulation.

Still, the potential is there: Content Coins could create new markets for cultural discovery, where taste, timing, and trust intersect in economic form. But without strong mechanisms for context, quality control, or follow-on utility, the model risks becoming noise—yet another reflexive loop of hype without substance.

• They earn from mints and trading fees.

• They build onchain identity and visibility.

• They experiment with monetization without platforms.

• They speculate on cultural momentum.

• They support creators they believe in.

• They may gain access to gated content or perks (if offered).

But here's the challenge: there’s no clear long-term value accrual for the holder.

Unless the creator commits to building more around the token (e.g., future airdrops, private groups, perks), the token risks becoming a souvenir at best—or a bag at worst.

The crypto space has long dreamed of breaking free from the Web2 paradigm—one where user attention is harvested, tracked, and monetized through opaque advertising systems. Yet without intentional design, Content Coins risk replicating the very traps we’ve sought to escape: incentivizing cheap attention over meaningful creation.

If the only metric that matters is how much a token pumps, creators may naturally optimize for controversy, virality, and short-term engagement. We’ve seen this movie before—YouTube thumbnails screaming for clicks, TikTok drama cycles, Twitter outrage farming. It’s the algorithmic arms race of the Attention Economy.

But there is an alternative.

In my recent article, “Is It Possible to Disentangle Advertising from Content?”, I explore the premise that attention is the core economic resource of the digital age—and that the vast machinery of Web2 exists solely to monetize that attention through intermediaries. Google, Meta, and X don’t create content; they sell access to the audience that consumes it.

This centralized model incentivizes creators to chase mass appeal at minimal cost, which leads to a flood of low-quality, attention-optimized content. High-quality, specialized content struggles to survive in this environment unless it’s locked behind paywalls—another friction point that undermines discovery and reach.

What if we flipped the model? What if attention itself became a monetizable asset for users and creators—without needing advertisers in the middle?

Content Coins offer a glimpse into this future. By allowing users to “mint” their attention into a token, they can financially support the creators they engage with, while also potentially participating in downstream value—whether through access, reputation, or utility.

This reframes the entire relationship: from creator-as-bait for advertisers, to creator-as-signal of aligned values and knowledge. From consumer-as-data to consumer-as-patron or co-owner.

But this only works if we design the system with aligned incentives between creators, collectors, and communities. Otherwise, we risk recreating Web2 onchain—more liquid, more speculative, but just as extractive.

Here's where the experiment gets interesting. Content Coins don't need to remain as static speculative assets. They could evolve into:

• Access Tokens – Token-holders get early access to new posts, Q&A, or even appear in the credits.

• Reputation Metrics – Like POAPs, they can become part of an onchain resume of curation.

• Community Governance – Holders vote on future content, themes, or collabs.

• Ad Revenue Sharing – If content earns through sponsorship, token-holders could receive part of it.

In other words: they could evolve from content-as-token to something new

The Content Coin debate is not just about one post or one token. It’s about rethinking how tokens can serve creators, audiences, and narratives—not just protocols or treasuries.

What we saw with the Base-Zora experiment was messy, chaotic, and imperfect. But it also opened a door. One where content becomes composable, attention becomes programmable, and culture becomes investable.

We’re far from finding the final form. But maybe, just maybe, Content Coins are the seed of something bigger.

Let’s keep experimenting. Stay Based.