Solana and Base founders debate: Does the Zora Token really have "fundamental value"?

Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Original title: Solana and Base founders start a debate: Does the content on Zora have "fundamental value"?

The founders of two major public chains are facing off directly, and the tension on Crypto Twitter is at an all-time high.

A heated debate surrounding "creator tokens" has ignited the crypto community. The founders of the two major public chains, Base and Solana, rarely took the field themselves, engaging in a direct confrontation over the two platforms, ZORA and Pump.fun.

What exactly triggered this confrontation? Let's start from the beginning.

The Controversy Trigger Point, Sterling Crispin's Doubts

The "war of words" in the crypto circle was ignited by Del Complex researcher Sterling Crispin's public questioning of Zora.

Zora is a social networking platform on the Base ecosystem chain that tokenizes user profiles and posts, aiming to help creators profit directly from their content.

But in Sterling's view, Zora is just old wine in new bottles. He bluntly stated that the vast majority of tokens issued on automated market makers (AMMs), with extremely low liquidity and exponential price curves, are still "rebranded garbage coins."

In debates with community users, he cited Pump.fun as an example: "The median result of ERC20 tokens on Pump.fun does not underperform the market, but goes straight to zero."

Faced with this intense questioning, Base founder Jesse Pollak quickly went into defense mode. He stated on the X platform, "I think you are wrong. Content is valuable, and creators are valuable." He further emphasized, "To consider the assets issued on Pump.fun and Zora as equivalent is itself a logical fallacy. Not all tokens are the same; fundamentals matter."

However, Jesse's remarks quickly stirred the emotions of another big player - Solana founder toly.

Solana founder intervenes in the hot discussion, the conflict escalates

The founder of Solana, toly, quickly intervened in the debate, retweeting Jesse's post on X and sarcastically asking, "lol wut? Do the coins on Zora have any rights to future cash flow from the creators?"

(Note: "lol wut" is an English internet slang, carrying a slight tone of disdain or feigned confusion, often used to express disagreement or find the other person's viewpoint ridiculous.)

From then on, the battle between the two founders officially began:

Round One: Does the content have "basic value"?

Jesse firmly stated: The content itself has fundamental value.

Toly asked: How can it be proven that it has fundamental value? Do token holders have the right to share in future advertising revenue from the content?

Jesse responded: Advertising is just one way to monetize. Just like a painting, even if no one pays for the ticket, it still has value.

Toly continues to attack: According to this logic, is it a good thing for retail investors when creators sell Zora tokens? Because retail investors can buy below the fundamental value of the content?

Jesse tried to explain: There are many types of tokens on Zora, but they all have one thing in common: they are all a repeated, infinite game in which the actions of the participants affect the operation of the entire system.

Round Two: No victory in the competition, neither side retreats.

Toly doesn't buy it and coldly mocks: It sounds like their "fundamental value" is zero.

Jesse insists: If you want to believe that the value of content is zero, that's up to you. But I believe that the content itself is very valuable, and we can establish a new system to give this value back to billions of creators.

Toly threw down the last blow: Then you go persuade the holders to let Coinbase use its profits to buy up those Zora tokens that are close to zero, because they are "below the fundamental value of the content."

This conversation was like elementary school students bickering, neither willing to back down, ultimately ending abruptly with Jesse's "OK."

Interestingly, toIy has been vigorously promoting the Solana ecosystem meme coins for the past few years, but this time to enhance his persuasiveness, he added: "I have been saying for years that meme coins and NFTs are just digital garbage with no intrinsic value. It's like loot boxes in mobile games, and people spend as much as $150 billion a year on mobile games."

Zora's "Pumping Show"

The focus of this "war of words" is the Zora project, which not only has the support of Base founder Jesse Pollak, but the token $ZORA has also surged 883% in the past month. Driving this wave of market activity are the positive news of Base App integrating content tokenization features, as well as Binance's launch of the ZORA/USDT perpetual contract.

Yesterday, the number of creators on the Zora platform reached 21,478, with 12,292 new creators and a total of 50,475 tokens issued, all setting new historical highs.

However, on-chain data provides another interpretation. According to on-chain analyst AI Yi, in terms of spot trading, Coinbase is the platform with the largest trading volume for this token, with a 24-hour trading volume of $82.6 million; while in terms of contracts, Binance's 24-hour trading volume reached $1.354 billion, which is 16.4 times that of spot trading.

It indicates that ZORA seems to have emerged as an independent altcoin market, but recently there hasn't even been a single transaction record exceeding $500,000 on-chain, suspected to be funds maneuvered within a CEX.

Source: AI Aunt

The intense clash between Jesse and Toly not only reveals the profound differences in the nature of "creator tokens" within the crypto world, but also reflects the intricate competition and ideological collisions among public chain factions.

This debate has no winners, just like the world's struggle over the definition of value, which is always a fierce game between ideals and reality, belief and doubt.