Hey friends,

I’m back in Europe after a week in the US, where I joined the Base Camp event hosted by Base / Coinbase. I felt like doing a mental recap of everything I saw and learned, and thought it might be useful to share it publicly.

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So, what’s Base Camp? It is a gathering where founders, creators and developers meet to push the Base ecosystem forward.

Before the trip, all I knew was that it would take place in Burlington, Vermont. I missed the first Base Camp last year and had never been to Vermont before, so I had no idea what to expect. The 3-day event ended up being hosted in a beautiful spot in Stowe, a well-known ski destination. Everyone attending got a cabin or room in one of the local resorts, which made the setting pretty unique.

The event had a packed schedule with talks, workshops, and plenty of activities designed to touch grass and break the routine. We went mushroom picking, did yoga, joined a pickleball tournament, sang karaoke (turns out there are some really talented singers among us), played poker, enjoyed a whiskey tasting, and more. There were also plenty of cozy spots where you could sit down and get some work done.

Not bad huh?

Jesse Pollak opened the event with big news: the exploration of a Base token. This could end up being one of the biggest developments in crypto, and while it is clear it will not happen this year, the implications are massive. It would have a big effect on how the ecosystem operates, including how apps should be designed. I am still processing how it might impact both the broader Base ecosystem and my own onchain activity.

Considering that more than half of the top 20 coins by market cap are blockchains, Base has a real chance to break into the top 10 — maybe even the top 5 — once a token is live. It is definitely worth keeping close tabs on how this progresses.

Every day, the Base team hosted a “roast” session where anyone could grab the mic and give unfiltered feedback on the Base App. I was honestly surprised by the quality of ideas, critiques, and struggles shared by users. It was a strong exercise in listening to direct feedback and openly discussing some of the biggest challenges.

The clearest takeaway was the risk of the “everything app” becoming the “nothing app.” If you try to do too many things at once, you often end up not doing any of them well. The sense I got from the team is that they plan to narrow the focus, prioritizing one main use case instead of trying to juggle social, trading, wallet, app store, and more all at the same time.

Personally, I do not have as strong opinions as many other users. I have not explored every feature, like trading, and I mostly use the Base App alongside Farcaster, so my experience has been more limited.

I had the chance to see Spindle, an “ads” product founded by Antonio García Martínez, who led Facebook Ads and wrote Chaos Monkeys. He also used to publish here on Substack. I have been trying to get my hands on the product for a while, and finally got to see a live demo.

In short, Spindle is a platform for creating onchain ads that take advantage of blockchain features like smart contracts and transparency. Publishers can set rules for what they want to achieve, define a budget, and Spindle connects them with distributors such as Base App and BitGet to display the ads. These ads go beyond traditional Web2 formats because they can be directly tied to onchain actions, like making a deposit, minting an NFT, or interacting with a mini app (for example, one day creating or trading an index on Indexy could be delivered as a Spindle ad). The product is rounded out with a powerful dashboard and analytics suite to track performance.

The session featured Maria Shen from Electric Capital, Jakub Rusiecki from 1kx, and Jess and Josh from Seed Club.

It was especially interesting because it helped me reflect on and validate my own journey with Indexy. My main takeaway was that there is no single path to raising capital or finding success. Every entrepreneur and onchain creator has to carve out their own way, which makes the process both challenging and rewarding. If you look at the most successful protocols, chains, apps, and creators, none of their journeys look the same.

Another thing that stood out is that investors tend to care as much about motives, intentions, and backgrounds as they do about numbers or traction.

Although the whole experience was very rewarding, my favorite part was to get to know and share ideas with other creators and founders. There is definitely a lot of talent in the Base ecosystem.

Here is a list of the people I met and the products I discovered in no particular order (apologies if I missed you, couldn’t find you after we chatted).

Chatting with Wes was refreshing. He gave me a clearer picture of what true decentralization looks like in practice, how much I still need to learn about DeFi and what it takes to operate a decentralized protocol. Seamless let’s you lend, borrow, and earn on Base.

I had a few beers with Jack, the founder of Clanker. We talked about the ups and downs of building, what it takes to run a strong team, and the challenges of operating one of the most popular token launchers in the space.

I got to share breakfast with Seb, the founder of Zapper. He has been building in DeFi for over six years and shared valuable lessons from that journey. He also gave me sharp feedback on Indexy: keep things simple.

Bondy reached out and shared a ton of ideas on how to make Indexy better. He has been following the project since day one and I felt lucky to hear his perspective. Bondy is part of Myosin, a Web3 marketing agency.

I met Filipe and Juampi, both building at Talent Protocol. If you are a data geek like me, you should give Talent a try and check out your Builder Score.

I caught up with Paul, who I have known since the early Fxhash days back in 2021 and 2022. We had a great conversation about the process of tokenizing Fx and what is coming next for the platform.

I caught up with Brian from Glider, a powerful tool for automating trading and portfolio management. I have followed Glider since the early days and it has been exciting to watch it keep growing stronger.

Wasabi let’s you trade with leverage and earn yield from a long list of curated coins. I was glad to see you can already trade $i, the native Indexy token, based on user requests.

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I met Heet Tike, the cofounder of Noice, and got a sneak peek of what is coming next. He has an ambitious vision, and I really appreciated hearing his thoughts on Indexy.

I shared my room with Thomas, a mini app builder from Hungary who is working on Drawcaster. It is a fun game where you can earn rewards by guessing drawings… Give it a try on the Base App or Farcaster.

I briefly met Cojo, the mind behind Ponder, a mini app for polls, prediction markets which has multiple interesting use cases.

I met Daniel, a founder from Chile, who is working on AI agents for specific use cases. One example is JesseXBT, an agent trained with Jesse Pollak’s social data.

I had a quick chat with Toady, who is building BetrMint, a tool designed to help founders, creators, and apps with creative token distribution.

Overall, the event was so well planned that I left positively surprised. The Base team set an extremely high bar. If I had to suggest one thing, it would be to give more spotlight to apps in different settings throughout Base Camp. With so many protocols, products, and creators in the ecosystem, the event felt like the perfect place to amplify what is already being built.

Until next time,

- Kaloh

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