Jesse Pollak
Creator and Lead, Base. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@jessepollak ↗LinkedIn ↗jesse.xyz ↗
Jesse Pollak is best known for creating and leading Base, Coinbase's Layer-2 network aimed at scaling Ethereum by drastically reducing transaction costs. Before launching Base, he co-founded the two-factor authentication company Clef and led consumer engineering across core Coinbase products, including Coinbase Wallet and Coinbase Pro.
1shows
1appearances
25statements
6resolved
5supported
1contradicted
83%fully supported
Everything Jesse Pollak said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Pollak: Decentralization is essential at the base layer, not entire stack
“The place where decentralization is really, really important is at the very bottom of the stack, right? You need decentralization at the Ethereum layer, at base, because what that enables is it enables this global platform that everyone can come and participat…”
Pollak: Four maturing unlocks have created crypto's golden building era
“Those, you know, four things
Chain scaling, regulatory clarity, stablecoins emerging as a really powerful tool, and then wallets getting simpler and simpler, I think have matured to the point where we've entered the golden age of crypto building, the golden ag…”
Pollak: Content and creator capital markets will become a major asset class
“I think one of the biggest asset classes that we believe is about to emerge is content and creators and Creator capital markets where for the first time you're going to have creators that start to say, Hey, I want to use this new platform to raise capital for …”
Pollak: Fintech 3.0 means rebuilding finance from scratch on crypto rails
“Now, I think about fintech three point O as the opportunity to rewrite it all to basically start from the ground up and say, how do we make the financial system work better for everyone by building it on top of the programmable software platform that includes …”
Pollak: Crypto is not yet having its ChatGPT moment
“Candidly, no. And I think the reason I say no is because if you ask a friend or family member, I don't think they'd say, oh yeah, I have had a magic moment with crypto. I think instead they might be fearful. They might not actually know what crypto is doing on…”
Pollak: Coinbase and Shopify condensed payment systems into 1,000-line smart contract
“And what we did over a nine month period was exactly that. We went into their systems, which are literally millions of lines of code where they're doing things like escrow they're taking taxes they're doing, you know, fees, tariffs they're doing refunds, charg…”
Pollak: Crypto turns proprietary intermediary network effects inside out
“I think the thing that's shifting with crypto is those network effects are being turned inside out. Where it's when we're onboarding people on chain and we're bringing them into these new systems, they're actually entering an open network where when you join t…”
Pollak: Smart contracts will become native monetary substrate for AI agents
“And I think that's exactly what we're seeing happen with crypto right now is that crypto is plugging in as a platform. That enables agents to transact natively. So instead of going and trying to operate in a browser over the legacy rails, they just call the sm…”
Pollak: Pre-breakthrough phase is the best time to build in crypto
“And so the thing that's powerful about that is that that's the best time for us to be building and the best time for YC entrepreneurs to be trying to break through And the moment is now to break through because we've done the infrastructure work, the tools are…”
Pollak: Crypto is experiencing its broadband transition moment
“And we think about this as the broadband moment for crypto, where when we were in dial up of the internet, you couldn't have the applications that exist today. And then gradually we scaled the throughput, scaled the bandwidth, and that led to these new breakou…”
Pollak: Base Compresses Transactions to Ethereum to Slash Costs 1,000%
“So what base does is you can kind of think about it like an HOV lane. We sit on top of Ethereum. We take millions and millions of transactions. We compress them and we publish them to Ethereum. And that means that when we're compressing them, we can get a ton …”
Pollak: AMM smart contracts replace massive traditional exchange infrastructure in hundreds of lines
“If you look at the New York Stock Exchange or any traditional exchange, this is huge amounts of infrastructure, huge amounts of overhead, and now that can be distilled into hundreds of lines of code, I think that that's kind of an aha moment for a lot of peopl…”
Pollak: Crypto builders often spent more on lawyers than engineers
“So many early stage builders and late stage builders ended up spending like equivalent or more money on lawyers than they were on engineers.”
Pollak: Stablecoins' main unlock is instant, global, free programmable dollars
“The first big unlock that stablecoins has done is basically said, okay, now everyone in the world can access dollars and not just can they access it, they can build with dollars and they can build with dollars on this new programmable platform where there's do…”
Pollak: Entrepreneurs are launching native fiat stablecoins across emerging markets
“Now alongside the dollar stable coins, you actually have entrepreneurs in all those countries who are creating stable coins for their currencies. So you have a Brazilian real currency. You have a Nigerian Naira currency. You have an Indonesia rupee currency. Y…”
Pollak: Users will demand apps supporting both USD and local stablecoins
“Because I think that kind of flexibility, that's actually what consumers and businesses are going to want. They're going to want the ability to have my, you know, payments app and be able to save in dollars. Save my local stablecoin, swap between them, earn in…”
Pollak: Programmable, Global Asset Tokenization Will Create Massive Value
“I think we can all imagine that if you take all the assets that exist, and then you put them into a platform where they can be programmable, they can move instantly, they can move basically for free, they can be accessible to anyone globally in the world, that…”
Pollak: Developers Are Bringing Stocks, Bonds, and Debt Onto Base
“And that's what we're seeing every day on base right now. It's like people are bringing stock, they're bringing bonds, they're bringing more stable coins, like I talked about earlier, they're Actually, you know, bringing collateralized debt positions. Like, ev…”
Pollak: Every post and creator on Base app is a coin
“On the base app, it's a new social product where every single post that you make is a coin and every single creator is a coin.”
Pollak: Crypto rails will solve AI content authentication
“One is in a world where AI proliferates it's gonna be really hard to know like what's real. And crypto provides a level of hardness and verification that I think can connect to AI in a way that solves that problem. Like if you have millions and millions and mi…”
Pollak: Base and Solana transaction fees dropped to fractions of a cent
“And the thing that has shifted over the last few years is that those costs have come massively down. And whether that's with base or Solana, we actually have this scaling that's happening where now you can build those applications and instead of it costing fiv…”
Pollak: Building an AMM interface is an ideal crypto 'Hello World'
“Building an interface that lets you interact with a swap like an AMM or an exchange, right? So one of the really powerful things that crypto enables enables you to seamlessly swap between assets. You can swap between Ethereum and a stable coin or between multi…”
Pollak: USDC took several years to reach $1 billion in issuance
“The first two to three years of USDC, we had launched it, but it didn't grow that much. Like, it took us a while to get to a billion dollars of issuance.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jesse's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Creator and Lead, Base | 1 | 25 | 83% 5/6 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |