Coinbase announced today a partnership with Echo to launch an investment model that allows community members to participate, providing further momentum for projects in the Base ecosystem. It also revealed the 40 Base projects that have been invested in and supported by Coinbase Venture over the past year and a half. This article will briefly introduce Echo and organize 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 Investment Recommendation Mechanism," where users can act as lead investors to create investment communities, share projects with members, and take a cut from it.

Since its launch, over 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including well-known projects like Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, Dawn, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, and others. A total of $100 million has been raised within a year, with MegaETH completing two $10 million fundraises through Echo in December 2024. The first raise of $4.2 million was completed in 56 seconds, and the second raise of $5.8 million was completed in 75 seconds.

Echo functions similarly to a "crypto investor's elite alliance," preferring to select high-potential projects recognized by a small circle, such as The Block's CEO Larry Cermak and Aave founder Marc Zeller, who have both created their Echo communities. To join, users must first answer some questions and undergo identity KYC verification. In addition, certain communities require meeting specific conditions to access particular investment opportunities. Currently, 58 community leaders have created communities on Echo.

This community-driven investment model uses smart contracts to manage funds, ensuring that lead investors cannot directly access user funds while empowering users to decide on the timing of token sales. After successful investment by a lead investor, they receive a certain percentage of profits from co-investors, effectively incentivizing sharing of high-quality projects. Although its elite-oriented nature means the user base is niche, this filtering mechanism ensures project quality, attracting investors who prioritize trust factors to participate.

This type of investment model typically means that its investor base is not particularly large, but this situation may change after Coinbase's partnership. Last month, founder Jordan Fish "Cobie" revealed plans to develop an ICO platform and stated, "Currently, there is no good way to conduct initial sales, and your best option may be CoinList, but for several reasons, it has significant limitations."

Meanwhile, Coinbase's Vice President of Business Development, Shan Aggarwal, and Base's founder, Jesse Pollak, stated in a release, "On-chain investing allows eligible investors to participate in ways previously not possible, while enabling founders to access a broader and more vibrant capital base. We are excited to expand Base's capital channels for builders, allowing more people to participate in the next wave of innovation." Both of their ideas align, making Coinbase Ventures the head of Echo at this point in time. It can be foreseen that Echo's product target users will become more "open" than before, with more Base-Build projects emerging.

Some industry experts have pointed out that the relatively lenient regulatory environment in the United States may promote the resurgence of public token sales. Another hot ICO platform at the moment, Legion, co-founder Matt O'Connor, stated, "Once ICOs regain momentum, they may shift focus away from the memecoin craze." In the current market environment, projects that truly focus on product development are decreasing, while a large amount of wealth is accumulating behind the scenes. If the collaboration between Echo and Base is successful, it will open up broader funding channels for industry builders and provide more eligible investors with opportunities to participate in previously hard-to-reach venture capital opportunities.

Base Alpha

We cannot predict the outstanding projects that Base may share on Echo in the future. Among the 40+ investment projects mentioned in this round, in addition to well-known projects such as Aerodrome, Morpho, and Mirror, there are many Alphas worth exploring. The editor has compiled some projects that retail investors can participate in and briefly introduced them.

AI and Technology Category

Sapien

Sapien is a decentralized data factory that allows enterprises, AI models, and agents to obtain datasets from experts in various fields "question-and-answer annotation, data collection, model fine-tuning, testing and evaluation, text classification, sentiment analysis, semantic segmentation, image classification." According to the official website, there are already 110,000 AI trainers participating in the points program from over 90 countries. 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 ties to Coinbase. As a decentralized solution for AI data labeling, it is claimed to have already provided services to excellent companies such as Baidu, Midjourney, Alibaba, and TAL Education Group. However, the specific service model and depth are unknown. Nevertheless, the author believes that in the current good state of the project, users can still participate in the 0-cost node plan to receive tokens that may be issued in the future.

HeyElsa

Elsa is an AI Agent designed for blockchain-related tasks. The author has been following this project for a long time. In a scenario where ChatBots in a DeFAI concept are rushing to issue coins, the project's insistence on building products instead of issuing coins is rare. Elsa is now able to stably meet almost all on-chain token interaction needs on 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, and more. Currently, users can earn points by completing various tasks, which may be related to future token plans.

Infrastructure

Conduit

Conduit is a crypto 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, with the funds being used to develop customizable blockchain products. With Base promoting L3's App Chain and Conduit simplifying blockchain development under Base's Layer 2 scaling needs, the market demand is strong. Although no token has been issued yet, the recent funding round demonstrates market confidence, and a token may be launched in the future to incentivize ecosystem participants.

Supermigrate

Supermigrate is a blockchain project migration service that helps projects transfer between different networks, now supporting chains such as Base, Op, Mode, and Ink. In a multi-chain ecosystem, with the development of L2, the demand for EVM-based migration services may increase, potentially increasing the demand 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 size in the market has now reached $170 million. Users may potentially earn future tokens issued by actively participating in prediction markets, providing liquidity, or referring new users.

Neynar

Neynar provides developer tools to help build decentralized social networks, mainly 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, although the tool currently operates under a fiat and crypto subscription commercial 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 commercial investment advice, but for sharing purposes only. In the current bear market, please be cautious in protecting your assets. The rapid development of the Base chain will surely leverage its ecosystem's strong Dev Acceleration products. Base is also working to increase community engagement and investment opportunities in valuable products to "unlock a broader pool of funds," which will bring more opportunities on Base. BlockBeats will continue to track valuable information.

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