Seamless Unraveled: AMA with Jesse Pollak, the Creator of Base
To watch this exciting conversation unfold, feel free to follow along on Youtube! LINK
This post has been translated by Seamless Ambassadors in the following languages: 한국어 Korean 🇰🇷, україна Ukrainian 🇺🇦, and Россия Russian 🇷🇺. Click this Google Drive Link to access these guides!
Seamless: We’re excited to have a very special guest with us today — the brainchild of Base himself, Jesse Pollak! Jesse, can you quickly introduce yourself?
Jesse: Sure, thing! My name’s Jesse, and I’m the Creator of Base. I’ve been following Seamless since the launch and am excited about its growth and the vision to lay the foundation for the next generation of onchain finance. I’m stoked to be here and glad that you’ve all decided to build on Base.
Seamless: You’ve been on many other AMAs talking about the overall vision of Base and how to bring the next 1 billion users onchain, so we wanted to try to touch some unique topics here.
In particular, the Seamless community and ecosystem are interested in improving web3 by:
- Simplifying the user experience
- Inspiring active governance
- Increasing capital efficiency
We know that you’re a big proponent of a better user experience onchain — can you talk about some ideas and inspirations for a better user experience on Base?
Jesse: Yes! I believe that onchain is the next online.
Like the internet transformed the world in the early 2000s, crypto is doing the same today — and it’s only going to start happening faster and faster. But to make that happen, as an industry, we need to push the platform to be simpler for all users to understand, from the veterans to the brand new onchain users.
We’re really focused on that with Base — creating an experience where everyone can get started onchain in less than 60s. One of the ways we do that is through our being incubated inside of Coinbase and supported by the broader Coinbase suite of products. This puts Base in a great position to be the onchain home for users to begin their onchain journey. But we’re also doing a ton of other things — enabling great smart contract wallets and seamless on and offramps for every product, and doing our part to put great onchain apps in front of as many users as possible.
Seamless: Great points! We believe that as well — the support of Coinbase, in addition to the support of several of the most prominent players onchain, can really bring the space together. Onchain, user experience is tied to both infrastructure providers as well as the apps themselves. Have you seen any particular examples of a better user experience?
Jesse: Definitely — we’re still early, but there are a ton of awesome apps being built on Base: Friendtech, Basepaint, Blackbird, and Parallel are a bunch of cool consumer products. And we’ve also seen awesome financial products like Aerodrome, Moonwell, and, of course, Seamless! It’s been exciting to see apps simplify experiences — for instance, bridging is much, much easier than it once was. I noticed apps like Seamless integrate bridge & swap widgets directly into the app experience, so users don’t need to flip between sites to bring their crypto onto Base. Onchain is like a bunch of lego blocks, and sometimes you just have to put the right legos together to build something beautiful.
I’m also excited for account abstraction and the continued utility added to wallet providers like Coinbase Wallet, such as subscriptions, messaging, and more.
Seamless: Totally — Seamless actually just launched the ability for Coinbase Wallet users to subscribe to official broadcasts, and we’ve seen a lot of excitement. It’s a novel feature, but also a no-brainer, since it’s getting increasingly difficult to fight for user attention when trying to highlight pertinent info.
Speaking of pertinent info, let’s talk about governance.
Seamless has been community-governed from the beginning, built by a passionate community of collaborators with backgrounds from Aave, Coinbase, Uniswap, and more. It’s clear that both Base and Seamless really believe in the potential of decentralized governance. How can we continue to inspire the onchain community to participate?
Jesse: I think it’s what you just said. The key word is: Community. Onchain, the power is put back into the hands of the people, so building community is incredibly important…
Just like most things, people are more active if they believe that their input really matters. And sometimes, it just takes an audacious goal — like making onchain the next online — to bring people together.
Seamless: So true! We’re fortunate that the Seamless community has organically brought together users who believe in a simpler experience to inspire the masses.
Seamless was inspired by the first generation of DeFi, which demonstrated that permissionless, decentralized lending and borrowing was possible with smart contracts. This was a significant breakthrough, but there are still limitations, such as the need to require overcollateralization to borrow, which limits capital efficiency.
For that reason, we’re aiming to push forward the next generation of DeFi with permissionless, decentralized, undercollateralized borrowing. The key innovation is that users are asked to choose the purpose of their loan at the point where they borrow the funds — hence, these are called Integrated Liquidity Markets or ILMs.
Jesse: Very cool! Awesome to see this new kind of utility emerge onchain.
Seamless: Agreed We couldn’t be more excited about pushing forward a more seamless DeFi experience for everyone, and really believe that Base is the perfect home for us.
Thanks again for joining us and sharing your thoughts! Looking forward to the next one!
Jesse: Definitely — thanks for building on Base!
Seamless Protocol is the first decentralized, native lending and borrowing protocol on Base. Seamless lays the foundation for the next generation of DeFi, focusing on lower-collateral borrowing and a better user experience to inspire the masses.
Join the community and get plugged in via the following links:
🧑💻 Website: https://seamlessprotocol.com
📱 App: https://app.seamlessprotocol.com
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/seamlessfi
👾 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Uye9jCVgUp
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