Base co-founder discusses token issuance again—what does Zora’s launch of live streaming at this moment signify?

Original Title: "With Base Token Launch Expectations Approaching, What Does Zora's New Livestream Feature Indicate?"

Original Author: San, Deep Tide TechFlow

On September 15, 2025, Base founder Jesse Pollak announced that the team is exploring a native Base token, sparking widespread attention and discussion in the crypto market. (Note from Rhythm: On October 15, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak mentioned again in an interview that Base will issue a token and develop it based on Ethereum, aiming to achieve ecological interoperability.)

As the flagship L2 under the largest US crypto exchange Coinbase, Base has a TVL of about $7.2 billion. With numerous SocialFi products in its ecosystem, it boasts nearly 700,000 daily active on-chain addresses, ranking first among all L2s.

These figures have led the market to hold high expectations for a Base token launch. Previously, Coinbase Wallet was renamed Base App and underwent major updates, adding social, payment, and other features, seemingly hinting at the imminent arrival of a native Base token.

The current market consensus is that Base will most likely complete its TGE in Q4 this year, and may distribute airdrop allocations based on interaction records with leading projects in the Base ecosystem.

Such speculation has made leading applications in the Base ecosystem scarce assets, with many users turning their attention to Zora.

As a leading application in the Base ecosystem, Zora has performed exceptionally well in the past half month. On October 14, it announced the upcoming launch of a livestream feature on its platform, seemingly preparing for the "big event" ahead.

The "content as token" narrative of traditional crypto creator economy platforms has gradually lost its novelty for meme players. Compared to text and images, livestreaming can bring richer content and stronger FOMO emotions to audiences on all levels. It is foreseeable that many "talented" creators will use Zora's livestream feature to launch more memes with compelling narratives.

Zora: From NFT Platform to Creator Economy Infrastructure

Zora was founded in 2020 and received support from Coinbase's venture capital fund at its inception, raising a total of $60 million through three rounds of financing.

Zora launched during the NFT narrative boom, and as the Base ecosystem's NFT platform, it accounted for over 50% of NFT market share on Base. Until this year, Zora completed its transformation from an NFT platform to a popular content platform in the Base ecosystem, laying a natural advantage for itself in the upcoming Base token distribution.

In April 2025, the $Zora token was issued with a total supply of 10 billion, 50% of which was allocated to the community. At that time, the market was busy chasing various memes on Solana, and Zora did not attract much attention.

The turning point came in July, when Zora underwent a major update, enabling large-scale issuance of creator tokens and meme coins on the platform through Base integration. It officially shifted from an NFT trading platform to a meme launch platform, quickly becoming the hottest application in the Base ecosystem.

Compared to established products like Pump.Fun, the later entrant Zora absorbed a lot of "predecessor" experience and introduced many innovative mechanisms.

In terms of token types, Zora not only has tokens corresponding to content, but also introduced a "creator coin" for each creator, with each user profile corresponding to one. This allows creators to receive additional market-recognized rewards for providing quality content on the platform.

The core innovation lies in Zora's revenue distribution model. The token trading fee on Zora's platform dropped from 3% in the early days to 1%, with 50% paid directly to creators, 20% permanently locked as token liquidity to deepen the trading pool, 20% rewarded to developers/platforms that refer creators to deploy tokens, 4% as rewards for specific trading addresses, and 5% going to the platform treasury.

This distribution mechanism is also closely tied to the platform token $Zora. All rewards are paid in $Zora tokens, and all income entering the platform treasury will support the price through market buybacks.

Overall, Zora provides users with an easy-to-use, almost zero-barrier token issuance tool, allowing any content creator to deploy tokens with one click. Creators can earn ongoing revenue from secondary market trading instead of profiting from one-time sales.

According to data, Zora generated over $460 million in trading volume in July alone—nearly 10 times its historical NFT trading volume. Over 1.6 million creator tokens were issued, surpassing competitors like Pump.fun during the same period, making it one of the most active meme launch platforms in the Base ecosystem.

This transformation is most directly reflected in the price of $Zora. According to Coingecko data, this shift caused $Zora's price to surge from $0.012 to around $0.09 in just ten days, an increase of nearly 800%.

Recent Performance and Analysis

In the past month, Zora has demonstrated strong competitiveness in both price resilience and product iteration.

After the price rally in July and August, as the creator economy narrative cooled in September and the crypto market broadly declined, $Zora's price also fell back to around $0.05.

On October 10, Zora announced its listing on Robinhood. As the first Base ecosystem token to be listed on Robinhood, $Zora's price soared about 70% from $0.05 to $0.085 on the day of listing, with 24-hour trading volume surging about 780% to $569 million. This brought a huge liquidity improvement for $Zora. On the other hand, the Robinhood listing also marks mainstream market recognition of Zora's value and attention to the development of the Base ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the holding structure of $Zora also changed significantly during September and October. According to on-chain data, a large number of whales entered or increased their $Zora holdings in the past 30 days, especially during the overall market downturn in September, with large holders continuing to buy against the trend. This change in holding structure seems to indicate that Zora's long-term value is being recognized at the institutional level.

Following the Robinhood listing, the black swan event of October 11—Trump's announcement of increased tariffs on China—further drew market attention to $Zora's performance during what became one of the largest black swan events in crypto market history.

According to data, on October 11, $Zora's price dropped sharply from a high of $0.12 to $0.05, but unlike most assets that failed to rebound, $Zora returned to around $0.1 in just one day, a single-day increase of nearly 50%, making it one of the few assets to quickly complete "post-disaster reconstruction."

During this black swan event, $Zora's strong resilience led many investors to add it to their watchlists. On October 15, $Zora's price once again showed strong resilience, rebounding from $0.08 to around $0.1.

From an ecosystem perspective, Zora currently almost monopolizes the creator economy track on Base. Over 90% of meme coins in the Base ecosystem currently originate from Zora, and such impressive data strongly supports market speculation about Zora's weight in the Base token distribution.

Also in October, Zora announced a reduction in trading fees from 3% to 1%, with 50% of the revenue returned directly to creators. Although this profit-sharing move may affect protocol revenue in the short term, it is beneficial for greater user participation and future expansion in the long run. This approach has also improved Zora's public image.

Recently, Zora has also shown clear strategic acceleration. On October 14, Zora posted an official tweet previewing the upcoming livestream feature. This is reminiscent of Pump.Fun, another meme launch platform, which recently launched a livestream feature that quickly brought a wave of viral events and meme coins.

Although Zora has not yet released detailed information about the livestream feature, based on the current content token mechanism on the Zora platform, we can speculate on the potential impact of livestreaming on $Zora.

For example, users might spend $Zora to tip streamers in real time; streamers could use $Zora to mint NFTs for their fan communities as identity badges; and users might spend $Zora to unlock high-quality paid livestream rooms and special privileges.

All these possibilities could provide clear upward momentum for $Zora, showcasing a model more suited for long-term development and $Zora token price appreciation than Pump.Fun.

Potential Risks

Although Zora has many positive factors, the risks behind its growth cannot be ignored.

The main issue is that most creator tokens on the Zora platform lack liquidity. Currently, CoinGecko tracks only 9 tokens with meaningful market caps, totaling just $18 million. Compared to meme launch platforms on BSC and SOL, which often have meme coins with market caps in the tens of millions, Zora still has a lot of catching up to do.

Recent market volatility could also trigger a widespread liquidity crunch if market sentiment turns cold.

A more direct investment risk is token unlocking. On October 30, 160 million Zora tokens will be unlocked, accounting for 4.55% of the total supply, which could create significant short-term selling pressure.

On the other hand, the upcoming livestream feature could be a double-edged sword. Pump.Fun is the best example: although its livestream feature brought popular tokens like $BUN and $BackWork and attracted many meme players, it later faced more market controversy due to poor content moderation, and the collective collapse of popular tokens caused heavy investor losses.

However, unlike Pump.fun's "wild" development approach and inexperienced young team, Zora is backed by the more mature and "steady" Base ecosystem. Its demonstrated operational capabilities have to some extent alleviated similar concerns. Currently, the Zora platform has over 2.9 million users, providing ample resources for livestream feature promotion. Perhaps this time, Zora can deliver a new answer to the integration of crypto and livestreaming.

Seizing the Window of Base Token Launch Expectations

Zora provides a clear path for participating in the anticipated Base token airdrop. Its core position in the Base ecosystem, strong growth data, and demonstrated price resilience all indicate that it is a project worth watching.

The current $850 million FDV still leaves reasonable room for growth, considering Zora's ecological position and growth potential. Especially with the catalyst of the Base token launch expectation, its value as a leading application in the ecosystem may be further amplified.

However, high short-term market uncertainty and the upcoming large unlock also present resistance for $Zora. Investors can monitor recent market changes and post-unlock price performance to decide whether to add $Zora to their investment list.

The expectation of a Base token launch is approaching step by step. Against the backdrop of intensifying L2 competition, launching a native token is almost an inevitable choice for Base, and Zora's position makes it a project that cannot be ignored for those seeking a Base airdrop.

The opportunity is right in front of us—the key is whether you can seize the timing and rhythm accurately.