In the wave of global blockchain innovation, Asia is becoming an important driving force and core area for the development of on-chain applications. On September 17, FarCon Asia, the first large-scale Farcaster ecological offline event in Asia, hosted by Takocast and co-organized by BlockBeats, was successfully concluded. Jesse, head of the Base protocol, and Tony, founder of Tako, had a conversation. In this conversation, Jesse, founder of Base, discussed the current situation and future of the Base ecosystem, shared in detail Base's strategic vision for promoting global stablecoins and social applications on the chain, and demonstrated how on-chain technology can change the global creator economy and social network landscape. BlockBeats has organized and edited the text version of the content of this conference, hoping to help social application developers and audiences. The following is the content of the conversation:
Base's values and goals
Tako: Under the leadership of Jesse, Base has made rapid progress in the past year. No doubt, everyone wants to know, Jesse, what exciting projects have you planned or are working on on Base? Can you share with us some of these projects and how they fit with the vision of Base?
Jesse:Of course, Base has only been online for a year. At the beginning, we just refined what Base culture is, what Base methodology is, how to build it, and what values we value. Base just held a Base party in August, and I think some of you may have attended. The event was really wonderful. 400 core developers came together to celebrate the achievements of the year and recommit to the mission of building a global community.
Jesse video connected with the venue
We will go to India next, then Thailand, then Singapore and the Philippines. This will be a three-week global tour to communicate with developers in different places and understand how we can support them and help them achieve greater success. I am very much looking forward to bringing Base to the world, and also hope to bring the world to the chain.
Nowadays, user cases outside of the financial sector are also taking off, and one of the directions I am most excited about is social. If you look back at the development of the Internet over the past 20 years, it is social products that really drive growth, and it is these products that have grown the number of users from zero to billions. I think projects like Farcaster are showing how to build social products in a completely new way - a way that is open, decentralized, and accessible to everyone.
Base is very supportive of developers building social applications, and I think these applications will lead the next wave of users, allowing us to expand from the millions of on-chain users today to billions of people in the future.
Base is currently growing very rapidly, especially in the payment and stablecoin areas. The payment area has established itself as a major application scenario, especially the stablecoin payment business driven by the US dollar stablecoin. But what I am most interested in is actually non-US dollar stablecoins. We need to bring currencies from all over the world, such as the Singapore dollar, the euro, the Nigerian naira, the Kenyan shilling, and other currencies on the chain. If we can achieve these currencies on the chain instead of trying to convince people to use brand new technology or give up the currency they are familiar with, it will be very valuable.
We don’t need to change all people’s perceptions of money, we don’t need to make them use a brand new currency, or use a currency that doesn’t work in their local community, or make them accept payment methods that don’t conform to their salary habits. We can say, no, now you can use money as before, but it’s ten times more globally available, and you will get ten times better financial services than you have now.
This technology has tremendous value, it will drive globalization, including social applications and global stablecoins on-chain, which will drive the next generation of on-chain economy. These are the things I am most focused on at the moment.
Tako: What milestones do you think are worth watching in the process of advancing Base? Also, now that we are far away in Asia, how will this affect and change the landscape of decentralized open networks?
Jesse: We think about Base's efforts in four main aspects, and in the end, in order for everything to work smoothly, we want to build a secure, decentralized, and scalable platform that allows all of these parts to work together. When we think about how to measure the progress and success of Base, each part has a corresponding North Star goal.
For developers, our goal is to introduce one million high-quality developers on-chain, which I believe is a goal that can be achieved in the next few years. There are currently 26 million developers in the world, but there are only tens of thousands of developers on the chain now. We need to achieve a 100-fold growth in the next few years to reach the goal of one million, which is an important milestone for us.
In terms of the application ecosystem, our focus is to introduce one billion high-quality users to the chain. At present, looking at the entire industry, we need to achieve about 1,000 times growth, which is consistent with our thinking. We believe that the ratio of developers to users is usually about 1 to 10 to 1 to 100, so it is reasonable to target a 100-fold growth in developers and a 1,000-fold growth in users.
On the capital markets side, our goal is to have $1 trillion of assets on-chain, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, the U.S. dollar, the Singapore dollar, all the currencies in the world, and a lot of native assets.
We are working to achieve what we call "Gigagas" throughput, which is equivalent to the broadband moment of blockchain. At that time, we will be able to achieve transaction times of less than one second and transaction fees of less than one cent from the perspective of user adoption, which is the huge scale we are trying to achieve.
So our four major goals are - for developers, it is high-quality developers; for applications, it is high-quality users; for capital markets, it is $1 trillion of assets on-chain; and finally, a secure, decentralized, scalable platform.
I think one of the things that I am very firm about is that a lot of people in the industry have been accustomed to using the growth rate of the Internet as an analogy for measuring the adoption rate of cryptocurrency, and they will compare the two, but I am actually very confident that the growth rate of cryptocurrency will exceed the growth rate of the Internet.
Because to get everyone on the internet, you need to give everyone hardware - whether it's new mobile devices or devices that users have to buy and own. You have to dig trenches and lay cables, and actually build lines to get people to the internet.
The difference in the on-chain world is that all the hardware is already deployed, everyone already has internet access, so we just need to flip the switch, upgrade the system, and we need to provide them with new tools that are based on the same internet foundation but can improve their lives.
I think we're already starting to see these tools emerge, social products like Farcaster, Jam, payment products, etc., and what we need to focus on now is how to make these products good enough for ordinary people to think that this is an obvious choice. Because they will realize: "Oh, I can only earn less than 1% of the value I create by posting content on traditional online social networks, and big companies take 99%; I can post content on the chain and get 90% of the value share, which will allow me to live a better life."
Asian developers are very sharp
Tako: Exciting, and I think we will continue to work in this direction. At the same time, considering that one of our themes here is Farton Asia, Asia is also an important part of it. Jesse, before you start the Base global tour, I would like to ask you how do you think Asian developers and users are doing compared to what you encounter in the West? What is special about them?
Jesse：Very excited to be in Singapore and Asia. There is no doubt that Asia is the hotspot for on-chain innovation right now. In the past few years, we have seen many US developers leave the US and come to Asia because there is a lot of innovation here. In addition, countries like Singapore are also at the forefront in terms of regulation, providing a safe and supportive environment for developers to help them create incredible on-chain products.
I think there are two aspects that are particularly worth mentioning about Asian developers, especially in Singapore and other regions that have done very well. First, looking at the history of Asian applications, such as WeChat, Asian developers have accumulated a lot of experience in building applications. And I think the real difference of the next generation of super apps is that they will be open, which means that they will share the same open data sets, and many different people can build super apps. They can use the same basic network and then continue to improve and perfect it through competition.
The second point that caught my attention is that there are many strong cultural leaders in Asia who are very aware of mainstream culture and are thinking about how to bridge these cultures to the on-chain world. I recently spoke to the founder of Sofamon, a really cool on-chain sticker product that users can dress up and customize. He's originally from China, but is now focused on the Korean market, and he showed me how they're trying to reach Korean audiences through K-pop. I was really impressed by his keen grasp of culture and his precise insight into young audiences. And this cultural insight, I see it again and again, so I really believe that this is a very important trend.
Jesse retweets Safomon official content to celebrate Tiktok fans exceeding 1.4 million
We just held the offline meeting of the Base Leadership Team in 2025 in New York last week. We brought the entire Base core team together to discuss what we want to focus on in 2025. In this process, I really want to recommend a framework for thinking about strategy. There is a great book called "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy", which is probably one of my favorite business books.
Because in this industry, we often see people write so-called "strategies", but they are not real strategies, just some random content. A lot of so-called "strategies" are just to-do lists. The real difficulty of strategy is to figure out what is actually happening, identify challenges, weaknesses and opportunities, and then develop a strategy that can respond cleverly and produce high leverage in this environment. Therefore, if you are thinking about how to build or run a business, or want to improve your strategic capabilities, I highly recommend reading "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy".
Tako: Okay, back to the previous question, regarding Asian developers, I think the core lies in creators and the creator economy. I would like to hear your views on the future development of the creator economy. At the same time, Jam recently launched an event called "Advocating Creative Freedom" to connect creators with audiences and funders to collide ideas together. We are thinking about how to create an "Onchain Summer"-like effect for creators, so that everyone can come together to discuss and act without worrying about being marginalized or excluded because of inconsistent projects. What do you think creator projects like Jam need to do to achieve an "Onchain Summer"-like effect in the creative economy?
Jesse: I like this idea very much, and the event advocating creative freedom is great. This is exactly the kind of creativity and support for creativity that we need when building the next generation of the Internet on the chain.
There are over 200 million people who consider themselves creators, but if you look at the platforms that these creators use, like TikTok or Instagram, these platforms earn 99% of the revenue, while the creators get less than 1%. I think this is a really, really important mission, and I'm also very happy to see teams like Jam and Farcaster working together to achieve it.
As for how to make this project successful, I think you've got a great start. The key is that creators can't do it alone. If creators don't have support from developers and BDs, they will lack the tools, resources, and distribution channels to really spread their creativity around the world.
In Base's past experience, we have found that one thing that is very successful is to help everyone find a small team, maybe two or three people, who can work together to create and develop as a platform to showcase their creativity so that they can share it with the world. This is why we held the "Chain Summer Buildathon" event in June. At that time, we attracted 7,500 people from all over the world to build and create on Base. This kind of community-based event that brings everyone together is very helpful in supporting creators to take the first step.
The second point is that I think we need to provide creators with a simple and easy-to-understand entry experience to make it more intimate and friendly. For those who don’t have enough time to build a team and create on the platform, we should enable them to create their own content on the chain from scratch in ten seconds. This is really possible for creators at this stage through tools such as smart wallets and Farcaster’s social graph. But this requires everyone here to invest resources to develop really high-quality products that allow creators to create content.
The third point is that we also need to think about how to reach these creators and tell them this story. I think all of us have to speak out online, we need to go to platforms like Instagram and TikTok, start making short videos, talk directly to creators, and tell them: "Hey, there is a better place for you to create, it's called on-chain creation. Here, you will make more money, your creativity can reach more people, and you will have more creative fun and opportunities to express yourself."
These are my three suggestions: continue to build great products, connect developers and creators so that they can really collaborate, and finally tell the story of on-chain creativity so that everyone can understand it.
Tako: I think the last point is very important, promote our work to people inside and outside the community, tell them what is happening here, there are great opportunities here, just join us. We have created a channel called ACF, and every project is welcome to share and discuss ideas there. No one will be banned from speaking, and everyone can share freely, which is really important.
Jesse:I love this concept, we’ve done something similar on Base and it’s been really good. Just in the last few weeks, we’ve created the Base creator channel on Farcaster. If you post a video that’s shared on Instagram or TikTok, you get paid every week, and there are different small tasks every week.
Left: Jam’s ACF channel; Right: Base creator channel (base-creates)
A few weeks ago, almost no one was sharing stories about on-chain creations, and this week we’ve had 80 people post videos and an amazing 100,000 views. We’re gradually building up momentum to tell the story of what’s happening on-chain. When it comes to changing the world, we just need to keep strengthening, getting stronger, and making our voices louder and louder. Because the value has begun to appear, now we just need to tell the story well.
Live Question
Base's development trajectory has been very significant in the past few months. What key moments or important events do you think have shaped Base today?
Jesse:Yes, if you look back on this year, I think there are two key moments that stand out in Base's growth trajectory. You can see their performance on the data chart, but we also have a personal experience.
The first pivotal moment was in January when Farcaster released Frames. We saw this moment and quickly jumped on the opportunity and decided to provide all the tools for developers who wanted to create Frames and make it very easy for them to develop on Base. This triggered a huge influx of developers and also allowed many new users to try Base for the first time. Today, Base supports about 80% to 90% of all transactions on the Farcaster social graph. So this was a huge turning point, and our connection with Farcaster became even closer in the process.
The second important turning point was in mid-March when we successfully implemented the EIP-4844 upgrade, an Ethereum upgrade project promoted by the Base core team in collaboration with Ethereum.
