Base Protocol's Co-founder discussing token issuance again, while Zora's launch of live streaming feature hints at what?

Original Title: "As Base Coin Issuance Nears, What Does Zora's Live Streaming Feature Launch Signal?"

Original Author: Umbrella, Deep Tide TechFlow

On September 15, 2025, Base founder Jesse Pollak announced that the team is exploring a Base native token, sparking widespread attention and discussions in the crypto market. (Rhythm Note: On October 15, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak mentioned again during an interview that Base would issue a token, developed on Ethereum with the aim of achieving ecosystem interoperability.)

As the flagship L2 under the largest US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, Base has a TVL of approximately $7.2 billion, and with numerous SocialFi products within its ecosystem, it boasts nearly 700,000 on-chain daily active addresses, ranking first among all L2 solutions.

This data has raised high expectations in the market for Base's coin issuance. Additionally, the renaming of Coinbase Wallet to Base App and significant product updates to incorporate social and payment functionalities seem to hint at the imminent launch of Base's native token.

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

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

As a leading application within the Base ecosystem, Zora has shown outstanding performance in the past half month and announced on October 14 that it will soon launch a live streaming feature on its platform, seemingly preparing for what's to come next in a "big" way.

The narrative of "content as currency" on traditional crypto creator economy platforms has gradually lost its appeal to meme players. Compared to text and image content, live streaming can provide audiences with richer content and FOMO emotions at various levels. It is foreseeable that numerous "talented" creators will use Zora's live streaming feature to broadcast more narrative-rich memes.

Zora: From an NFT Platform to Creator Economy Infrastructure

Zora was founded in 2020 and received early support from a venture fund under Coinbase, raising a total of $60 million through three rounds of financing.

At the time of Zora's launch, the NFT narrative was in full swing. As a Base ecosystem NFT platform, Zora held over 50% of the NFT share on Base. Up until this year, Zora underwent a transformation, transitioning from an NFT platform to a popular content platform within the Base ecosystem. This also solidified its natural advantage in the Base token distribution.

In April 2025, the $Zora token was released with a total supply of 10 billion tokens, with 50% allocated to the community. At that time, the market was busy chasing various memes on Solana, with little attention on Zora.

The turning point came in July when Zora underwent a significant update, enabling the platform to issue creator tokens and meme coins at scale through Base integration. It officially transitioned from an NFT trading platform to a Meme launch platform, a popular track within the Base ecosystem, becoming the hottest application within the Base ecosystem.

Compared to established products like Pump.Fun, Zora, as a latecomer, absorbed a lot of "elder" experiences and introduced many innovative mechanisms.

In terms of token types, Zora not only has content-specific tokens but also added "Creator Coins" corresponding to each creator, with each user profile corresponding to one. This allows creators on this content platform to receive additional rewards for providing quality content that is market recognized.

The core innovation lies in Zora's revenue distribution model design. The token transaction fee on the Zora platform has decreased from an early 3% to 1%. Of this, 50% goes directly to the creator, 20% is locked permanently for liquidity provision, enhancing the depth of the liquidity pool, 20% is rewarded to the developer/platform recommending creators deploying tokens, 4% is rewarded to a specific transaction address, and 5% goes into the platform treasury.

Furthermore, this distribution mechanism is closely related to its platform token $Zora. All rewards will be converted into $Zora token payments, and all revenue entering the platform treasury will support the price through market buybacks.

Overall, Zora provides users with an easy-to-use and almost barrier-free token issuance tool, allowing any content creator to deploy tokens with a single click. Creators can also derive ongoing revenue from secondary market trading rather than one-time profit-taking.

According to data, Zora generated over $4.6 billion in trading volume in July, a figure nearly 10 times its total NFT historical transaction volume. With over 1.6 million creator tokens issued, surpassing competitors like Pump.fun during the same period, it has become one of the most active meme issuance platforms in the Base ecosystem.

The most tangible manifestation of this transformation is seen in $Zora's price. According to Coingecko data, this transformation caused $Zora's price to surge from around $0.012 to approximately $0.09 in just ten days, achieving a nearly 800% increase.

Recent Performance and Analysis

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

Following the price surge in July and August, as the creator economy narrative cooled off in September and the crypto market experienced a general downturn, $Zora's price also fell to around $0.05.

On October 10th, Zora announced its listing on Robinhood, becoming the first Base ecosystem token to be listed on Robinhood. On the listing day, $Zora's price surged linearly from $0.05 to around $0.085, a roughly 70% increase, and the 24-hour trading volume skyrocketed by about 780% to $569 million, bringing substantial liquidity improvement to $Zora. Furthermore, the Robinhood listing also signifies mainstream market recognition of Zora's value and attention to the development of the Base ecosystem.

On the other hand, during the September-October period, there was a noticeable change in $Zora's holding structure. According to on-chain data, in the past 30 days, a large number of whales entered to establish positions or increase their holdings of $Zora, especially during the overall market downturn in September, as large holders continued to buy against the trend. This shift in holding structure seems to imply that Zora's long-term value is gaining institutional-level recognition.

Following the listing on Robinhood, on October 11th, came the Black Swan event of Trump announcing an increase in tariffs on China. $Zora's performance in this largest Black Swan event in crypto history further attracted market attention.

According to data, on October 11th, $Zora's price briefly dropped from its peak of $0.12 to $0.05, but unlike most assets with insufficient bounce-back strength, $Zora quickly returned to around $0.1 in just one day, achieving a nearly 50% daily increase and becoming one of the few assets to promptly complete "post-disaster reconstruction."

In this Black Swan event, $Zora demonstrated strong resilience, causing many investors in the market to start including it in their watchlist. On October 15, the $Zora price once again showed strong resilience, bouncing back from $0.08 to around $0.10.

From an ecosystem perspective, Zora currently almost monopolizes the Base creator economy track, with over 90% of meme coins in the Base ecosystem coming from Zora. Such a dazzling data point has also provided strong support for market speculation on Zora's share of the Base token distribution weight.

Also in October, Zora announced a reduction in the transaction fee from 3% to 1%, with 50% of the revenue being directly returned to creators. Although this concessionary behavior may impact protocol revenue in the short term, in the long run, it is beneficial for more user participation and future expansion. The displayed generosity has also improved Zora's public image.

Recently, the Zora platform has shown a clear strategic acceleration. On October 14, Zora announced via official channels that it would soon launch a live streaming feature. It is hard not to recall the live streaming feature launched by Pump.Fun, another meme launching platform, which brought about numerous viral events and meme coins in a short period of time.

Although Zora has not yet provided detailed information on this upcoming live streaming feature, based on the current Zora platform's content token mechanism, we can predict the potential impact of the live streaming feature's launch on $Zora.

For example, users could spend $Zora to tip the streamer in real-time, streamers could spend $Zora to mint NFTs as identity markers for their fans, and it could also lead to users spending $Zora to unlock high-quality paid live streaming rooms and special broadcasting privileges.

All these possibilities will provide clear upward momentum for $Zora, demonstrating a pattern distinct from Pump.Fun that is more in line with long-term development and $Zora's token price.

Potential Risks

Although Zora has many positive factors and pieces of good news, the risks behind its growth should not be overlooked.

The main issue is the lack of liquidity for most creator tokens on the Zora platform. Currently, CoinGecko only tracks 9 tokens with significant market value, totaling only $18 million. Compared to the meme platforms on popular networks like BSC and SOL, where meme coins easily reach market values of tens of millions, Zora still has a lot of catching up to do.

And if the recent market turbulence were to dampen market sentiment, it could very likely trigger widespread liquidity depletion.

A more direct investment risk lies in token unlocking. On October 30, 160 million Zora tokens will unlock, accounting for 4.55% of the total supply, which may create significant selling pressure in the short term.

On the other hand, the upcoming live streaming feature may also be a double-edged sword. Pump.Fun is a prime example. Although the live streaming feature attracted a large number of meme players to invest in hot assets like $BUN and $BackWork at the time, the subsequent inability to effectively control the live content led to more market controversies. Moreover, the trend of popular assets collectively plummeting also resulted in significant losses for investors.

However, in contrast to Pump.fun's ongoing "wild" development path and its young inexperienced team, Zora is backed by a more mature and "stable" Base ecosystem. The demonstrated operational capability has to some extent dispelled similar concerns. With over 2.9 million users, the current Zora platform provides ample communication resources for the live streaming feature. Perhaps this time, Zora will present us with a new answer to the integration of crypto and live streaming.

Seizing the Window of Base Token Airdrop Expectations

Zora has provided a clear path for participating in the Base token airdrop expectation. Its core position in the Base ecosystem, strong growth data, and demonstrated price resilience all indicate that this is a target worthy of attention.

Considering the current $8.5 billion FDV relative to Zora's ecosystem position and growth potential, there is still a reasonably good upside. Especially with the Base token expectation as a catalyst, the value of being a leading app in the ecosystem may be further magnified.

However, the high degree of short-term market uncertainty and the upcoming significant unlock pose challenges for $Zora. Investors can monitor recent market changes and post-unlock price performance to decide whether to add $Zora to their investment portfolio.

As the Base token airdrop expectation draws near, amid the intensifying L2 competition, the launch of a native token by Base is almost a inevitable choice, and Zora's position in this regard is a project that cannot be overlooked for Base airdrop speculation.

The opportunity is right in front of us; the key is whether we can accurately seize the timing and pace.