Gas was scared he wouldn’t qualify but stayed locked in and made it to the Finals “I have so much adrenaline. I’m anxious and I’m scared and I am worried and I am very afraid of not qualifying. Compared to everyone on this leaderboard I’m probably the least person you would expect to qualify. Everyone knows Dani, everyone knows Rell WaiterG, Scharo as well. I’m just a nobody. I keep this private. All this money I make I do it for my family. I’m the only son. Winning this would be a good redemption because I haven’t had the best of times in the past couple of months.” “Dedication beats talent. You can be the most talented trader but someone who’s sitting there grinding, exposing themselves to onchain, is going to outperform you eventually.” “I’m over the moon. I came second in points being the most consistent trader throughout the whole tournament. Gave it my all. I just did 150 hours locked in on chain.”

Jesse Pollak says Base grants go to whoever moves the metrics “We have grants for early stage builders getting off the ground, grants for creators making content about the ecosystem, grants for trenchers trading or creating culture. We think about all of those as a stepping stone. That first check helps you get to a bigger platform where you move the ecosystem forward and then you get more funding.” “The things we care about are trading volume on Base, onboarded new wallets, TVL, overall flow through the ecosystem, bridged assets, payments. If you’re launching a meme or a protocol those are the metrics you want to drive. Go to dashboard dot base dot org, add your token contract or protocol, and you can see how much you’re moving the needle. If you move those metrics you’re going to get more investment, more resources, more amplification. Our goal is to make Base a meritocracy. The people who are making impact are the people who get paid and lifted up. P&L, TVL, volume, all huge ways to drive impact.”

Jesse Pollak says the communities that last are the ones that hustle past week one “It’s really the people. You got to have people who believe in the meme and who are willing to put in the work. I was in Singapore for Token2049 and Coinbase did a trading competition. I’m standing at the bar and I see this little Blue Chip guy. Instantly recognized as the $BLUECHIP meme on Base. I walk up to the guy holding a bag of them. He’s like I was a trader and then I got a bag and now here I am dropping blue chip little guppies on the bar. That kind of energy of showing up for more than a week, building through the ups and downs, keeping creating content, driving the energy. That’s what differentiates the communities that last.” “Whether you’re trading or trenching or creating or building, don’t let anyone tell you it’s easy. There’s no cheat code. It’s a hustle. You got to be the person who shows up to hustle hard. If you do that consistently and learn from your mistakes, you’ll come out the other side and create something banger.”

Jesse Pollak says he’ll follow the Base Track winner “Absolutely. I’m excited to follow folks leading the Base Track. We’re looking for more traders who want to spend their time and energy focusing on Base. What makes a good trader? People who have an eye for quality. Quality narrative, quality content, quality protocol. People who can see that early, maybe use tools to spot it, this whole agentic suite to mine the trenches, then have that gut sense for quality. That’s the skill set that’s going to lead people to differentiate.” “If you look at the wins on GMGN or FOMO, people would be surprised how many of those wins have come on Base. A ton of 100x, 1000x over the last few years because they saw quality early. That’s why we sponsored the Base Track, to spread the word. Base sometimes doesn’t have as much visibility as other trenches. More people can see this is a legit ecosystem with serious quality projects growing here. The more growth we get, the more of that flywheel we spin, the better outcomes for everyone.”

Jesse Pollak says traders on GMGN are the discovery engine funding builders “When you look at how tokens work on Base, it’s really the traders doing this valuable market service of discovery. Constantly seeking out things with high potential and high upside so they can get a stake early. Almost a hive mind, an incredibly powerful market-driven discovery engine that surfaces what’s going to be valuable over time. Some people are good at early discovery and the pump. Others are long-term holders who buy the dip and support the project for months or years. Both are super critical.” “These memecoins and early stage community tokens are a really powerful funding mechanism for the actual effort. Funding the memes to create content or funding the teams to invest in the protocol. That funding is coming through creator rewards, and those creator rewards are coming from traders. Virtuous cycle: traders do discovery, make money, generate the volume that funds the innovation. People around the world who previously never had access to a funding mechanism can get their idea off the ground. Traders making money, builders and memers earning the funding, all working together to create more protocols, projects, culture, and content.”

Jesse Pollak says Base meme community is built on long termism and AI “There’s long termism that exists on Base that’s unique. People who’ve been here for years building memes and creating culture through ups and downs. That’s a really powerful anchor. You’re going to have narratives that go up and down and people that come in and leave, but having a core of quality folks holding down the culture is a defining characteristic of Base.” “Another thing unique to Base is AI nativeness. It beats out from Coinbase. X42 transactions are the majority of volumes on Base. Coinbase for agents MPC toolkit lets you trade basically every asset class via your agent, growing fast week over week, works off-chain and onchain. Base team is the highest velocity team at all of Coinbase. 30 PRs a week up from 3 a year and a half ago. That bleeds into the community. That’s why you have AI meme runners on Base and teams using the tools to be way higher leverage.”

Jesse says Base trenches got an order of magnitude better “Base has been around for three years. Last year we started seeing really strong product market fit across finance on Base, trading, payments, financing, people doing things with agents that weren’t possible before. The trenches from a content and creativity perspective have gotten an order of magnitude better. People are using AI to create really engaging narratives. One or two person teams showing what’s possible. We’ve been learning from the trenches of Base. How do we do more of that on the Base team?” “Original core meme communities like Toshi, TYBG, Chad have been curating Base culture for two or three years. Last six months, driven by AI and stocks coming onchain, a new wave of folks came in who maybe hadn’t been exposed to Base or Crypto. More Gen Alpha. People building through a bear market. Excited for them to reap the rewards as the market turns. Energy at the Base meme summit was good. Energy was based.”

Dani is up $73k and on track for $100k “Yesterday was $55K. He ended up making another $20k yesterday. He posted that he wanted to make $100k before the end. He’s got two days left. If he’s pulling in 20 bombs every day I don’t think he’s very far off. He’s up 73k now which is actually insane. It just goes to show the top of the leaderboard are just insane traders.”