This is my conversation with Jesse Pollak. He led retail engineering at Coinbase for many years — building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. More recently, he is leading the development of Base, Coinbase's L2 built on the OP Stack.
Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:43) - sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io) (00:03:07) - motivation behind Base (00:11:12) - pitching Base to the Coinbase exec team (00:14:24) - challenges of innovating on a schedule (00:17:54) - failing repeatedly to find the right answer (00:22:09) - decision to build an L2 with Michael (00:23:30) - convincing Surojit Chatterjee, Coinbase’s CPO (00:24:59) - launching Base internally (00:31:58) - blockchains as serverless compute (00:36:53) - uniswap as a serverless API for currency conversion (00:39:30) - the power of small but leveraged teams (00:42:31) - how to straddle product building in the onchain and offchain world (00:45:25) - sponsor: Privy (privy.io) (00:51:22) - the significance of THIS moment in Crypto (00:53:56) - getting a 100M devs and 1B users onchain (00:57:02) - how the NFT UX will change with Base (01:10:13) - how crypto will be incorporated in applications (01:14:00) - the risk of onchain heterogeneity (01:17:27) - building privacy-oriented onchain platforms (01:26:00) - upgrading the financial system (01:28:33) - attending Quaker School (01:34:43) - relentless positivity in life (01:38:47) - building a better future
Jesse Pollak: jesse.xyz on ETH - https://jesse.xyz/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/jessepollak Github - https://github.com/jessepollak
Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab
Produced by - https://spectral.to
Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.