A developer wasted three years on Base

Original Title: Base Stole 3 Years of My Life
Original Author: @weretuna
Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Base once used "Build on Base. We will support you." to attract numerous developers, but the reality often fell into silence.

In this article, author @weretuna, co-founder of @pndmdotorg, a studio focused on building viral Ponzi-style chain games on Solana, narrates their team's three-year journey from dedication, waiting, and disappointment to a quick ramp-up after migrating to Solana: The success or failure of an ecosystem is never determined by slogans, but by who is willing to provide real resources and attention to the application. For all builders still "awaiting support," this is a stark reminder of reality.

The following is the original text:

"Build on Base. We will support you."

That was their initial promise. We believed for a full three years. During these three years, we launched over 10 products: games, AI agents, prediction markets, zkTLS-related products. We invested almost our entire lives in developing on Base.

What did we get in return?

Nothing. Not a single retweet. Not a single reply. We didn't even have a group chat.

Last year, we created @infecteddotfun — the most viral and explosive game on Base. We grew a brand new account to 50,000 followers within a month. It was trending across platforms, and everyone couldn't stop talking about it.

But Base didn't even retweet our launch post.

At that moment, I finally fully understood: where the problem was.

And the problem was severe.

Why Did We Believe

When I first discovered Base, it was almost a "no-brainer" choice. Back then, L2 fragmentation was a complete mess. Building a product was hard enough, and choosing which chain to build on was even harder.

Then Base launched — endorsed by Coinbase, with built-in "friends and family tech." Jesse and the team pushed the "app-first" narrative hard. For the first time in a long time, I felt like someone finally cared about the app, not just the infrastructure.

It looked like a truly "builder-first" chain. They said they cared about developers. They said they would help you with marketing. They said they were different.

Looking back, it was just better marketing. We fell for it.

A Slow Awakening

Over time, my belief in Base began to waver.

The first real crack was when they started aggressively pushing Farcaster and Zora — not because these products were necessarily the best, but because they had invested in these companies. That's when I realized how this game really works.

The crypto industry loves to pretend that blockchain is "permissionless, open": anyone can come and build, the best products will win. Because there are so few apps that truly achieve PMF, I always thought this space encouraged experimentation, encouraged diversity.

But the reality is: either you build what they like, or you belong to that circle. Everyone else is just a "background" used to bring attention and liquidity to this chain.

Yet on X, they still say: "Come build on Base, we'll help you break out."

And we believed them. We spent 3 years developing. We launched over 10 apps. We bet our lives on this.

But they never responded to our X. Discord doesn't respond. Telegram doesn't respond. We can't even get into a group chat.

Support? None.

I think the reason is simple: what we did was not what they liked.

Do It Yourself

So we decided not to wait any longer. Fine, we'll break out on our own.

We spent months brainstorming, and finally came up with @infecteddotfun — a "virus-spreading game" on the blockchain.

It went viral instantly.

A brand new account, 50k followers in a month. Becoming one of the most breakout games on Base.

It wasn't until this moment that the Base team finally started responding to us. They said, "We will support your launch." They said, "Trust us." They said, "Just wait a little longer."

So we waited.

The day of the launch arrived. And what do you think happened? Well, nothing happened at all.

No tweets. No retweets. No support whatsoever.

Imagine this: you spend 5 months building a product, finally manage to get them to commit to "supporting" it, and then, when the crucial moment comes, that support vanishes into thin air.

When I asked for the reason, the response was vague, politically charged, and made no sense at all.

Watch what they do, not what they say

Actually, the worst part was not what happened to us.

The worst part was that this happened to everyone. But no one dares to speak up. Once you're in Base, you become a "hostage." You don't want to ruin the relationship in case you need them someday. So, you stay silent.

And Base continues to pretend they are supporting developers.

If you only want to support a select few projects, that's fine. Just say it. Don't cherry-pick "favorites" while cosplaying as a chain that "supports all builders." What they say and what they do are completely different things.

So we left.

After leaving, everything changed

We migrated to Solana.

6 months later, we created @addicteddotfun, the biggest crypto game of 2025. $4 million in revenue in 48 hours.

We didn't suddenly get smarter. We just left a chain that treats developers like NPCs. Our next game, @jaileddotfun, is also about to launch on Solana. All future games will be on Solana.

We will never build on Base or Ethereum again.

Conclusion

I used to think that the competition between Ethereum and Solana was a good thing. Developers should build wherever they want. But after wasting 3 years of my life, I believe it has been a net negative for the industry.

Too many great builders are still stuck in ecosystems like Base. I'm not surprised at all: many people once they switch to Solana, like us, suddenly see 10x, even 100x growth.

Developers should go where the users are. And right now, the users and liquidity are on Solana. This isn't about "chain maximalism," this is results-driven—from our own data and the experiences of our friends.

I've wasted enough time on Base already.

So you don't have to anymore.

[Original Tweet]