Base App is officially sunsetting its Creator Rewards program and Farcaster-powered social feed. The strategic pivot, announced on Monday, February 9, 2026, marks a shift from social-first experimentation to ““transaction-fir”t” strategy aimed at making the platform the premier hub for tradable on-chain assets.
We’re making the Base app the best place to trade onchain.
Starting today, the feed will focus entirely on tradable assets. This means we’re removing the Talk feed in favor of a feed of onchain activity.
As part of this shift, we’re also sunsetting Creator Rewards. In the last…
— Base App (@baseapp) February 9, 2026
The Creator Rewards program, which launched in July 2025 to incentivize social engagement on the Ethereum Layer 2 network, will conclude this coming Sunday. According to data shared by the Base App team, the initiative distributed approximately $450,000 to 17,000 creators over its seven-month lifespan, resulting in an average payout of just $26 per creator. Final reward distributions are scheduled to be processed by February 18, 2026.
Strategic pivot to “do less, better”
Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base, explained that the decision stems from a need to provide a more focused user experience. Pollak noted that while the app initially leaned into social features, feedback indicated these often felt too similar to Web2 platforms, leaving the demand for high-quality tradable assets underserved.
“The app needs to have one primary focus, and that thing is trading,”
Pollak stated, adding that the team realized they needed to “do less, better”. Under the new roadmap, Base App will prioritize driving distribution for a wide array of assets, including memes, creator coins, stocks, and prediction markets, while moving social elements like leaderboards and copy-trading to a secondary supportive layer.
Transitioning the social layer
The removal of the native Farcaste“ “talk fe”d” also reflects this narrowing of scope. Pollak admitted that the Base App was an “imperfect Farcaster client” and suggested that social-heavy users would be better served returning to the native Farcaster interface. Despite this, Base will continue to support “Mini Apps” and creator-specific tokens including Pollak’s own $JESSE token to maintain ecosystem diversity. This shift to a trading-first strategy aligns with founder JessPollak’s firm rejection of token price intervention, underscoring Base’s commitment to free, open, and fair on-chain markets.
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