The rivalry between Base and Solana has taken on a brand new dimension with the introduction of the Base-Solana bridge. The most recent episode goes again to September 2025, when Aerodrome’s co-founder Alex Cutler boasted at Basecamp that Base would “flip Solana,” attracting the eye of Solana’s well-known defender, Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Helius Labs.
The strain has since escalated after Base launched the bridge to Solana on December 4, with Solana’s most vocal builders accusing Jesse Pollak of disguising a vampire assault as interoperability.
The rivalry of ‘wholesome competitors’
The bridge, which makes use of Chainlink CCIP and Coinbase infrastructure to let customers transfer belongings between Base and Solana, was launched with early integrations in Zora, Aerodrome, Virtuals, Flaunch, and Relay.
They’re all purposes native to Base, and whereas Pollak framed the transfer as bidirectional pragmatism, Vibhu Norby, founding father of Solana creator platform DRiP, referred to as it out for being something however.
He took to X with footage of Aerodrome’s Alexander Cutler at Basecamp, claiming that Base would “flip Solana” and grow to be the biggest chain on the earth. Norby’s response was pointed: “These usually are not companions; if they’d it their manner, Solana wouldn’t exist.”
The put up apparently rubbed Jesse Pollak the improper manner. His response put up began the discourse on what the bridge actually means for each chains. In his reply, Pollak claimed that Base constructed a bridge to Solana as a result of “Solana belongings should have entry to the Base financial system and Base belongings ought to have entry to Solana.”
Nevertheless, Norby replied with allegations that Base intentionally handed on Solana-based purposes for launch, nor did they liaise with the Solana Basis advertising and marketing or operations crew.
Akshay BD, a well-liked voice linked to Solana’s Superteam, chimed in, “Calling it bidirectional doesn’t make it so. It’s a bridge between two economies that has web import/export end result based mostly on the way you roll it out. I don’t thoughts that you just’re aggressive… I thoughts that you just’re being dishonest.”
In response to that, Pollak acknowledged that the crew may have “improved the best way we communicated to the Solana Basis, however the concept there’s some conspiracy right here is simply ungrounded in actuality.”
Solana’s Toly was additionally skeptical of the Base bridge
By then, the thread had already garnered an viewers and caught the eye of Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder.
“Migrate Base apps to Solana so that they execute on Solana and the transactions are linearized by Solana staked block producers,” he wrote. “That might be good for Solana builders. In any other case, it’s alignment bullshit.”
All through the talk, Pollak repeatedly identified that Base introduced the bridge in September and commenced discussing it with Yakovenko and others in Might, and that it’s bidirectional, which suggests Base and Solana builders will profit from entry to each economies.
Nevertheless, respected voices on Solana argue that the tactic Base used to launch the bridge is proof that its principal perform is to siphon Solana capital into Base’s ecosystem whereas advertising and marketing it as reciprocal infrastructure.
Nevertheless, if the bridge solely lets Base apps import Solana belongings whereas protecting all execution and payment income on Base, it finally extracts worth from the SOL ecosystem with out giving something again, which is the vampire assault thesis folks like Toly are going with.
Pollak is satisfied this isn’t the case and argues within the thread that each chains can compete and collaborate concurrently, and that the bridge was a response to builders on each side wanting entry to one another’s economies.
He additionally claimed that Base tried to interact Solana ecosystem members throughout the 9 months it took to construct the bridge, however apparently, “people weren’t actually ” except for some meme tasks like Trencher and Chillhouse, who selected to collaborate.
Norby and Akshay countered that speak by arguing that dropping a repo with out coordinating launch companions or working with the Solana Basis reeks of tactical extraction dressed up as open-source infrastructure.
What doesSolana acquire from the Base bridge?
Respected voices on Solana declare that with the bridge, Base positive factors quick entry to Solana’s cultural and monetary momentum, which is lots contemplating how Solana has been the middle of meme coin buying and selling, NFT hypothesis, and retail onboarding for the previous yr.
By integrating SOL and SPL tokens into Base apps, Base will get entry to all that power and in addition advantages from being the “impartial” interoperability layer that connects all ecosystems.
Solana advocates insist that the community solely positive factors optionality, not assured worth seize. For the connection to be actually reciprocal, the bridge might want to push Base builders to experiment with Solana execution or encourage Solana apps to start out utilizing Base liquidity swimming pools for bridged belongings.
Within the occasion that the bridge solely serves as a one-way funnel that pulls Solana belongings into Base’s financial system, Solana dangers turning into a feeder chain for Base DeFi quite than a vacation spot, which makes it the shedding social gathering.
