Coinbase-Backed Zora to Airdrop Token After a Week of Contentious Promotions

Onchain social media platform Zora said its ZORA token will go live on April 23, days after it gained viral traction on X after a push from the Base network team.

It outlined two snapshots for the drop in an X post, one covering activity from January 1, 2020, to March 3, 2025, and another from March 3 to April 20, 2025.

Snapshots are the ability to record the state of a blockchain at a specific point in time, often used to reward users in tokens based on their activity on that blockchain over a specific time period.

The Coinbase-backed Zora came into the spotlight last week after a push from Base creator Jesse Pollack on how the platform allowed the creation of “content coins” — or tokens that represented their underlying picture or word phrases in a tradeable form.

Pollack’s amplifications of several Zora-created tokens drew hype and activity to the platform, with user count and token creation setting records late last week. It attracted over 230,000 “new” traders (or wallets that interacted with the platform for the first time) on Sunday, data shows.

Base’s official X account posted about one such token, called "Base is for everyone,” which sent its market cap soaring from a few thousand to over $17 million within hours.

Blockchain sleuths later found three crypto wallets bought the tokens ahead of the official announcement — netting them a profit of $666,000, as reported.

Crypto exchange Coinbase, which develops and maintains Base, told CoinDesk at the time that is for everyone coin is not the official cryptocurrency of Base, and the layer 2 did not directly sell those.

Announcement of a token following such promotions has sent X users erupted with accusations of insider trading and poor communication.

“So it was literally an airdrop shill to create hype and liquidity for a dump of supply controlled by Coinbase Ventures? Got it,” snarked user @DCBcrypto.

Others, like @KienNguyen_NFT, predicted “Day 1 listing + insiders making 8 figs incoming,” while @blknoiz06 gave a backhanded compliment: “good marketing.”

Pollack has since squashed rumors of the Zora promotions being a marketing campaign, however.