Can Retail Investors Participate in Coinbase Ventures' Projects Now? Learn How to Seize the Opportunity of the 'Coinbase Hundredfold Public Sale' through Echo

Coinbase announced today that it is partnering with Echo to introduce an investment model for the community to participate in, providing further momentum for projects within the Base ecosystem. It also revealed the 40 Base projects that have been invested in and supported by Coinbase Ventures over the past year and a half. This article will briefly introduce Echo and compile Alpha opportunities from more than 40 projects.

What is Echo

Echo was founded by crypto KOL Cobie "@echodotxyz" in March 2024. Cobie was previously the Growth Lead at Lido and has hosted the popular Web3 podcast UpOnly. The core of Echo lies in the "Lead Investor Recommendation Mechanism," where users can act as lead investors to create investment communities, share projects with members, and receive a share of the profits.

Since its launch, over 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including well-known projects such as Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, Dawn, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, and others. In one year, a total of $100 million has been raised, with MegaETH raising $10 million in two rounds through the Echo platform in December 2024. The first round raised $4.2 million in 56 seconds, and the second round raised $5.8 million in 75 seconds.

The model is similar to the "Syndicate" of crypto investors, which tends to select high-potential projects recognized by a small circle. Figures like The Block's CEO Larry Cermak and Aave founder Marc Zeller have created their own Echo communities. To join, users must first answer questions, undergo identity KYC verification, and in some cases, meet specific criteria to access certain investment opportunities. Currently, 58 community leaders have created communities on Echo.

This community-driven model manages investments through smart contracts, ensuring that lead investors do not have access to user funds and allowing users to decide when to sell tokens. If a lead investor's investment is successful, they receive a percentage of the co-investor's profit, incentivizing the sharing of high-quality projects. Despite its elite orientation, which results in a relatively niche user base, this screening mechanism ensures project quality and attracts trustworthy investors.

This type of investment model is destined to have a relatively small investor base, but this situation may change after the collaboration with Coinbase. Last month, founder Jordan Fish "Cobie" revealed plans to develop an ICO platform and stated, "Currently, there isn't a good way to conduct initial sales, your best bet may be CoinList, but for several reasons, it has significant limitations."

Meanwhile, Coinbase's VP of Business Development, Shan Aggarwal, and Base's founder, Jesse Pollak, stated in a joint announcement, "On-chain investing allows eligible investors to participate in ways previously not possible, while enabling founders to access a broader, more vibrant capital base. We are excited to expand Base's builder capital channels, allowing more people to participate in the next wave of innovation." Their thoughts align, making Coinbase Ventures an Echo leader at this juncture, foreseeing Echo's product target audience becoming more 'open' than before and expecting more Base-Build projects to emerge.

Some industry experts suggest that the more permissive regulatory environment in the U.S. could lead to a resurgence in public sales. Another hot ICO platform of the moment, Legion, co-founded by Matt O'Connor, stated, "Once ICOs regain momentum, they may shift the focus away from the memecoin craze." In the current period, there are fewer and fewer real products being built, and more wealth is accumulating behind the scenes. If the collaboration between Echo and Base is successful, it will unlock a broader pool of funds for builders within the industry and allow a wider range of eligible investors to participate in venture capital transactions previously inaccessible.

Base Alpha

We cannot predict the future outstanding projects that Base may share on Echo, but among the mentioned 40+ investment projects, apart from the already quite well-known projects like Aerodrome, Morpho, Mirror, there are many Alphas worth exploring. The following is a compilation of some projects that retail investors can participate in and a brief introduction.

AI and Technology Category

Sapien

Sapien is a decentralized data factory that allows enterprises, AI models, and agents to access datasets from experts in various fields, such as "question-answer annotation, data collection, model fine-tuning, testing and evaluation, text classification, sentiment analysis, semantic segmentation, image classification." According to the official website, over 110,000 AI trainers from more than 90 countries have participated in the point program. Sapien plans to launch an open, permissionless protocol on Base in the future, combining economic incentives, reputation systems, and game mechanics to drive the scale of AI training.

This project is led by Base co-founder Rowan Stone and Polymath founder Trevor Koverko, with deep collaboration with Coinbase. As a decentralized solution for AI data labeling, it is reportedly already serving excellent companies such as Baidu, Midjourney, Alibaba, and TAL Education Group. However, the specific service mode and depth are unknown. Nevertheless, in the current good state of the project, users can still participate in the 0-cost staking program to potentially receive future tokens.

HeyElsa

Elsa is an AI Agent designed for blockchain-related tasks. The author has been following this project for a long time. In a situation where ChatBots are rushing to issue coins under a DeFAI concept, the project's insistence on building a product without issuing coins is rare. Elsa is now able to consistently meet nearly all on-chain token interaction needs across multiple chains, including staking and lending, sending and receiving cryptocurrencies, exchanging and bridging cryptocurrencies, viewing cryptocurrency prices, viewing popular tokens, viewing portfolio settings, getting the latest news, etc. Currently, users can earn points by completing various tasks, which may be related to future token plans.

Infrastructure

Conduit

Conduit is a cryptographic infrastructure platform focused on helping teams quickly deploy production-grade OP Chains to meet the needs of DeFi protocols, gaming companies, and NFT platforms. The project recently completed a $37 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm and Haun Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures. The funds will be used to develop custom blockchain products. In the current implementation of L3 App Chain by Base, Conduit simplifies the blockchain development process under Base's Layer 2 scaling requirements, with strong market demand. Although no tokens have been issued yet, the recent funding round demonstrates market confidence, and tokens may be introduced in the future to incentivize ecosystem participants.

Supermigrate

Supermigrate is a blockchain project migration service that helps projects migrate between different networks, now supporting Base, Op, Mode, Ink, and other chains. In a multi-chain ecosystem and with the development of L2, the demand for EVM-based migration services may increase, potentially increasing the need for such foundational tools.

Social and Prediction Market Category

Limitless

Limitless is a decentralized social prediction protocol similar to Polymarket, allowing creators to set up prediction markets and engage with the community. Users can trade on the outcomes of real-world events and earn fees, similar to binary options or 0DTE options, providing a low-cost trading experience. The total market volume on the platform has now reached $170 million. Users may potentially earn future tokens through active participation in prediction markets, providing liquidity, or referring new users.

Neynar

Neynar provides developer tools to help build decentralized social networks, primarily serving social protocols like Farcaster. The project recently completed a $11 million Series A funding round with participation from Coinbase Ventures. As infrastructure for social protocols, while currently operating on a fiat and crypto subscription business model, as a tool deeply involved in the Farcaster product, the possibility of issuing tokens in the future to incentivize its ecosystem cannot be ruled out.

The above projects are not investment advice and are for informational purposes only. In the current bear market, please take care to protect your assets. The rapid development of the Base chain will undoubtedly leverage its ecosystem's strong Dev acceleration in product releases. Base is also working to increase community engagement and investment opportunities in valuable products in various ways to "unlock a broader funding pool," which will bring more opportunities on Base. BlockBeats will continue to track valuable information.

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