It’s 3 hours since $BASED TGE.
We have done something unprecedented in the space. We launch a token on not just Hyperliquid. Within an hour of launch, Based was live across (in alphabetical order):
Binance Futures
Bybit Spot + Futures
Coinbase
Hyperliquid
Kraken
OKX Spot + Futures
We’ve shown that it is possible to launch on Hyperliquid while being listed across major CEXs globally.
In the last few hours, we have done $160M+ in perp volume and ~$70M across spot and DEX. This places BASED among the more actively traded assets in crypto right now, especially in these market conditions.
23.5% of tokens were airdropped to the Based community without vesting. All airdrops happened on Hyperliquid, delivered directly to users’ wallets on HyperCore. No claim rush. No network congestion. A clean distribution.
To date, 68M tokens are locked through the pre-TGE staking pool, representing ~30% of circulating supply.
As a team, we gave ourselves a mandate to airdrop to the community in less than a year from launching our SuperApp on @HyperliquidX. Why? Because our users deserve it. There are people who gave us excuses like “wait for more favourable market conditions.” We didn’t want to keep people waiting.
When it’s time to launch, it’s time to launch.
I’ve taken a personal interest in token design, first as a DeFi maxi in 2021 and later as a trader (which led me to discover Hyperliquid in 2023). They say “founders should not trade and focus on building.” That’s probably true in the tech world, but in crypto, the token is the core product. The token rallies communities and incentivises stakeholders. TGE is the best time to design a system that aligns the people you need to build a successful crypto protocol.
When it comes to airdrops, you have users who want to sell everything on day one, and people who want to hold and believe in the project. Others want to stay long-term through a pre-TGE staking pool. To date, 68M tokens have been locked, representing ~30% of the circulating supply.
The next part of design is liquidity. Tokens should be liquid and tradable in many places. That’s why we chose to launch on both Hyperliquid and multiple exchanges at the same time.
We’ve shown the world that it is possible to launch on Hyperliquid and also be listed on many CEXs globally.
The journey is not complete.
Now that distribution is done, we will focus on building Based into a full ecosystem — where projects launch, agents operate, and capital flows, all powered by one of crypto’s highest-value user bases: traders who trade big, spend big, and hold with conviction.
For those hearing about $BASED for the first time, our litepaper is here: https://t.co/5wimqpfGoY
For those who have received the BASED airdrop and chose to hold, my team and I thank you.
And for those who just bought BASED today, welcome to the @BasedOneX family.
I am done playing not to lose. It's time to play to win.
Stay Based.
Markets shouldn't have borders. Neither should your assets.
Today, $BASED goes live. Built on the LayerZero OFT standard, natively transferable across Ethereum, BSC, and Hyperliquid.
One token. One interface. Every market. Crypto, equities, commodities. 24/7. Permissionless.
Listing today on Hyperliquid, Coinbase, Binance Alpha, Bybit, OKX, Kraken and HTX.
Full token details: https://t.co/KONf4ortQf
The future is Based.
DROPS E33: @edison0xyz from @BasedOneX: The Robinhood of Hyperliquid and why AI Agents Need Wallets
Edison is a co-founder of Based, a non-custodial trading platform built on top of @HyperliquidX. We discuss the four pivots he went through, the fraud attack that wiped out profitability, and a $200K-in-the-bank moment where he had to decide whether to keep going or walk away - and the numbers now speak for themselves. $40B in trading volume and $50M in revenue in under 8 months.
We talk about:
- Losing 95% of his net worth in the Terra/Luna collapse in 2022
- Four pivots in four years - from DeFi yield protocol, to stablecoin payment gateway, to crypto card issuer, to where Based is today
- Why builders in crypto need to also be traders
- How Based monetises on top of Hyperliquid
- The three buckets of crypto traders - retail, retail pro, and pro
- Why AI agents are the next massive wave of wallet users
- The fraud attack in April 2024 that wiped out a profitable card business overnight
And much more....
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
1:08 - Welcome to DROPS
1:47 - Who are you?
2:20 - What is Ziliqa?
3:42 - Ziliqa Joining Story
6:04 - Inspiration to build own project
8:16 - LUNA and the Promises
10:04 - Building in Terra ecosystem
11:37 - Terra Crash
13:10 - Hyperliquid X Terra
13:50 - The Recovery Playbook
17:04 - Builder vs Trader?
20:26 - How to raise funds?
31:05 - Hit by a Fraud
34:17 - Motivation for Builders
37:54 - What is BASED?
38:53 - Builder's Code
39:37 - Comparisons with Binance and Coinbase Pro
40:41 - Importance of Social Variety
42:33 - From Last Shot to $15M Revenue
44:06 - Role of @ethena in @hyenatrade
44:53 - Believe in yourself
46:48 - What different BASED is doing with perps?
49:57 - BASED AI Gateway
54:51 - Outro
The Based Master Plan, Part 2
The first master plan I wrote four months ago is now well into execution. Build the financial layer for trading and spending. Grow an ecosystem of developers on top of it. Turn trading into culture. Bridge on-chain and off-chain finance. Give people a reason to keep coming back.
The reason we started with a trading app is simple. That's where the users were, that's where we could prove the product worked, and that's where we could generate enough revenue to fund what comes next.
Now we're ready for the next part.
What changed
I should explain something that has shifted materially since we wrote that first piece.
AI is getting dramatically better, faster than most people expected. Eight months ago our engineers were using it because it typed faster than humans. That sounds almost quaint now. Today, frontier models produce work that is genuinely close to what strong developers produce themselves, and the iteration loops are getting tighter every few months.
The implication of this is straightforward. If any team can build any software product quickly and cheaply, then software is not a defensible business anymore. The value has to come from somewhere else. It comes from the users you have, the liquidity you sit on top of, and the rails that actual commerce flows through.
That is what Based has been building. And it is why the next phase looks the way it does.
The actual shift that is coming
Here is what we believe will happen over the next 6 months, and what we are positioning for:
1. The next wave of users won’t be human
Everyone will have at least one agent running alongside them handling tasks, making decisions, executing transactions. Companies will run fleets of agents working concurrently. The number of "users" on any financial platform will multiply, but most of them won't have names.
2. AI inference usage will increase dramatically from where it is today.
Right now, most AI inference usage is concentrated around chat apps and, more recently, coding workflows. That will change. We are going to start seeing collaborative agents automate more parts of work, consumption, finance, and personal decision-making. The amount of AI-inference spending required to support that world will rise materially.
3. Spending is the next pillar that gets disrupted
Programming was one of the first domains to get reshaped in a visible way. Spending is next. We believe AI agents will increasingly compute, compare, aggregate, and execute commerce decisions on behalf of users. Over time, AI will compress consumer decision-making itself; finding better prices, better routes, better timing, and more efficient actions.
The question worth asking is: where does all of that activity settle? Who owns the rails?
Here is what we are going to do
The goal is for Based to be the financial execution layer for both humans and agents. Not a wallet. Not a trading app. The system where economic intent, whether it comes from a person or an agent acting for that person, gets turned into action.
Here is how we get there.
Build the inference layer.
If agents are going to operate at scale, they need reliable access to intelligence. That means inference has to become easy to consume, easy to pay for, and easy to embed into workflows (it needs to flow like liquidity).
Based has already built AI inference infrastructure (https://t.co/1W4tkos9ch) that can be natively used by both agents and humans. More importantly, payments for this infrastructure have been designed to settle through Hyperliquid and Based Pay, our TradFi payment system.
We have already done this.
Drive real usage on top of it.
Infrastructure without usage is just overhead. We are releasing consumer products that sit on top of the inference layer and generate compounding demand. Product usage drives inference usage. Inference usage strengthens the infrastructure. That loop is what turns an infrastructure bet into a real business.
Own the commerce interface.
The long-term opportunity is not merely selling access to intelligence. It is owning the interface where intelligence meets action.
If AI becomes responsible for more decision-making, then the most valuable layer will not just be the model, or the app, or the wallet in isolation. It will be the system that can take an intent and translate it into execution across trading, payments, purchasing, and financial actions.
Expand what "Trade Everything, Spend Everywhere" actually means.
When we came up with that phrase, it described a product. Now it describes something larger.
Trading is not just perps and spot. It is any decision with an economic outcome that can be turned into an executable action. Spending is not just cards and checkout. It is any transfer of value, regardless of whether the entity initiating it is a human or an agent. Intelligence is not a chatbot bolted onto a wallet. It is the layer that sits inside the commerce stack and optimizes how capital moves through it.
When commerce becomes programmable, the companies that win will be the ones that already understand liquidity, settlement, incentives, and distribution as a single system. That is what we have been building.
Why BASED
We build around one of the most powerful ideas in crypto: that open financial rails enable faster experimentation and stronger alignment than closed systems do.
We are making a clear bet on two things.
First, that Hyperliquid becomes the dominant chain for AI commerce. The team is building toward housing all of finance on a single, fast, neutral chain. If they get there, it becomes the natural settlement layer for a world running on programmatic transactions. We have built most of our infrastructure there already. There is no comparable alternative.
Second, that agentic commerce is real and coming faster than most people think. OpenClaw gave an early glimpse of what it looks like when agents start replacing humans as the primary users of financial systems. That future is not theoretical for us. We have been building with agentic tooling for longer than it has been fashionable to talk about it.
We were early on Hyperliquid. We were early on agentic infrastructure. Being early is the only edge that consistently compounds.
Why this moment
Software is getting cheaper to build. Intelligence is getting cheaper to access. The window to build a defensible position around liquidity, users, and commerce rails is not permanent.
We have been in the right places early before. We intend to do it again.
The TGE is not just a financial event. It is the moment when the people who built this community with us get a real, structural stake in what comes next.
We do not just want to build products for our users. We want to build the future with them.
So in short, the Based Master Plan, Part 2:
Build the payment and settlement rails for AI inference
Release consumer products that drive compounding usage on top of them
Own the interface where intelligence meets financial execution
Make sure the people who built this with us share in what it becomes
The future is Based.
p.s: this article is also published on Based Page https://t.co/fkge2dfL2a.
I one-shotted it with Based AI by the way.
We just raised US$11.5M to build the next generation of on chain finance.
Proud to announce our latest round as we scale Based, the crypto SuperApp to trade everything and spend everywhere.
Based brings perpetuals, prediction markets, spot trading, and real world spending into a single on chain first experience. All from one SuperApp.
Introducing $BASED: Ownership for the Ones Who Built It
There are two kinds of tokens in crypto.
The first kind is built for charts.
The second kind is built for people.
$BASED is the second kind.
From day one, Based was never just another app. We set out to build a platform where users can trade everything, spend everywhere: across trading, prediction markets, cards, commerce, and the next wave of onchain consumer products.
Today, we’re introducing the token that powers that mission: $BASED
A fixed-supply utility token designed to:
- unlock real platform benefits,
- align incentives between users and builders,
- and give long-term community participants a meaningful seat at the table.
$BASED is more than a governance token aiming to unlock a growing list of benefits across the platform: reduced trading fees, up to 8% cashback on the Based Visa card, lifestyle perks, lower on/off-ramp fees, merchant discounts at Based Mall, access to future launchpools, and consumption credits for upcoming agentic features.
$BASED is our commitment to building differently.
A fixed supply,
Meaningful community distribution,
Real utility across products people actually use,
And long-term alignment from team and investors through structured vesting.
This model is designed to reward the people who have contributed to Based from the beginning: the users, holders, partners, and builders who kept showing up, gave feedback, and helped shape the ecosystem in real time. We believe those contributions should be recognized in a way that is transparent, durable, and tied to the long-term success of the platform.
As Based continues to expand across trading, cards, commerce, and future agentic features, $BASED is intended to be the connective layer that aligns participation with value creation across the ecosystem.
We’re still early. There is a lot more to build.
But the direction is clear: keep shipping, keep compounding utility, and keep the community at the center.
Thank you for building with us, and for helping write what comes next.
Stay Based.
Based is a project that stands for community first. This has been the core focus in shaping decisions made from the beginning, and especially the last few months.
Information about $BASED TGE will be released 8 Feb on @BasedFnd .
Over time, I’ve shared many stories on my X, about projects I truly love and about my family.
This time, I want to share my story.
Tomorrow is a once-in-a-lifetime moment😎 the day my wife and I shine the brightest.
Yes, that’s right. Tomorrow, I’m getting married.
I originally thought about letting it pass quietly. But I truly believe that joy grows when it’s shared, so I wanted to share this news with my Web3 friends.
The ceremony will begin tomorrow at 3:00 PM KST (6:00 AM UTC).
At the same time, I’d love to invite my Web3 friends to be part of this moment.
The wedding will be live-streamed on @BasedOneX, and I’d be very happy if you could join us and share in the joy together.
https://t.co/sJC6Rjz9DQ
Once again, thank you to all the precious friends I’ve met through Web3.
Mr. & Mrs. Whalet — we’ll live well and happily!!