Solana devs say Base is siphoning capital, not collaborating

The rivalry between Base and Solana has taken on a new dimension with the introduction of the Base-Solana bridge. The latest episode goes back to September 2025, when Aerodrome’s co-founder Alex Cutler boasted at Basecamp that Base would “flip Solana,” attracting the attention of Solana’s famous defender, Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Helius Labs. 

The tension 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 attack as interoperability.

The rivalry of ‘healthy competition’

The bridge, which uses Chainlink CCIP and Coinbase infrastructure to let users move assets between Base and Solana, was launched with early integrations in Zora, Aerodrome, Virtuals, Flaunch, and Relay. 

They are all applications native to Base, and while Pollak framed the move as bidirectional pragmatism, Vibhu Norby, founder of Solana creator platform DRiP, called it out for being anything but. 

He took to X with footage of Aerodrome’s Alexander Cutler at Basecamp, claiming that Base would “flip Solana” and become the largest chain in the world. Norby’s response was pointed: “These are not partners; if they had it their way, Solana would not exist.”

The post apparently rubbed Jesse Pollak the wrong way. His response post started the discourse on what the bridge really means for both chains. In his reply, Pollak claimed that Base built a bridge to Solana because “Solana assets deserve to have access to the Base economy and Base assets should have access to Solana.”

However, Norby replied with allegations that Base deliberately passed on Solana-based applications for launch, nor did they liaise with the Solana Foundation marketing or operations team.

Akshay BD, a popular 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 net import/export result based on how you roll it out. I don’t mind that you’re competitive… I mind that you’re being dishonest.”

In response to that, Pollak acknowledged that the team could have “improved the way we communicated to the Solana Foundation, but the idea that there’s some conspiracy here is just ungrounded in reality.” 

Solana’s Toly was also skeptical of the Base bridge

By then, the thread had already garnered an audience and caught the attention of Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder. 

“Migrate Base apps to Solana so they execute on Solana and the transactions are linearized by Solana staked block producers,” he wrote. “That would be good for Solana developers. Otherwise, it’s alignment bullshit.”

Throughout the debate, Pollak repeatedly pointed out that Base announced the bridge in September and began discussing it with Yakovenko and others in May, and that it is bidirectional, which means Base and Solana developers will benefit from access to both economies.

However, reputable voices on Solana argue that the method Base used to launch the bridge is proof that its main function is to siphon Solana capital into Base’s ecosystem while marketing it as reciprocal infrastructure.

However, if the bridge only lets Base apps import Solana assets while keeping all execution and fee revenue on Base, it ultimately extracts value from the SOL ecosystem without giving anything back, which is the vampire attack thesis people like Toly are going with. 

Pollak is convinced this is not the case and argues in the thread that both chains can compete and collaborate simultaneously, and that the bridge was a response to developers on both sides wanting access to each other’s economies.

He also claimed that Base attempted to engage Solana ecosystem participants during the nine months it took to build the bridge, but apparently, “folks weren’t really interested” with the exception of some meme projects like Trencher and Chillhouse, who chose to collaborate.

Norby and Akshay countered that talk by arguing that dropping a repo without coordinating launch partners or working with the Solana Foundation reeks of tactical extraction dressed up as open-source infrastructure.

What doesSolana gain from the Base bridge?

Reputable voices on Solana claim that with the bridge, Base gains immediate access to Solana’s cultural and financial momentum, which is a lot considering how Solana has been the center of meme coin trading, NFT speculation, and retail onboarding for the past year.

By integrating SOL and SPL tokens into Base apps, Base gets access to all that energy and also benefits from being the “neutral” interoperability layer that connects all ecosystems. 

Solana advocates insist that the network only gains optionality, not guaranteed value capture. For the relationship to be truly reciprocal, the bridge will need to push Base developers to experiment with Solana execution or encourage Solana apps to start using Base liquidity pools for bridged assets. 

In the event that the bridge only serves as a one-way funnel that pulls Solana assets into Base’s economy, Solana risks becoming a feeder chain for Base DeFi rather than a destination, which makes it the losing party. 

The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.