Jesse Pollak: Base, Coinbase's path to building an L2

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 futureJesse Pollak:jesse.xyz on ETH - https://jesse.xyz/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/jessepollakGithub - https://github.com/jessepollakLinks:Base - https://base.org/Coinbase - https://www.coinbase.com/Brian Armstrong - https://twitter.com/brian_armstrongSurojit Chatterjee Coinbase’s CPO - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/welcome-surojit-chatterjee-coinbases-chief-product-officerOP Stack - https://stack.optimism.io/Uniswap - https://uniswap.org/Goldfinch - https://goldfinch.finance/Zora - https://zora.co/Thank you to our sponsors for making this podcast possible:Optimism - https://optimism.ioPrivy - https://privy.ioInto the Bytecode:- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com Produced by - https://spectral.toDisclaimer: 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.