Zora Unveils Attention Markets on Solana, Ditches Base

The decentralized SocialFi platform Zora has introduced its innovative attention markets platform directly on the Solana blockchain, empowering traders to place bets on the potential virality of various buzzwords, hashtags, emerging trends, and hot topics across the internet.

Zora’s freshly unveiled platform invites users with the compelling tagline: “Trade what’s trending. Take positions on any topic, idea, meme, or moment before it breaks.” This feature allows participants to speculate early on content that could explode in popularity.

Jacob Horne, one of Zora’s key founders, announced on Tuesday that launching a “Trend” requires 1 Solana, equivalent to about $85 at current prices. This fee structure is specifically designed to discourage spam and low-quality submissions. Importantly, these Trends do not provide any rewards to their creators.

In addition, Zora facilitates the creation of “Pairs” within each Trend, and these Pairs do include rewards for their creators, adding an incentive layer for more detailed contributions.

A promotional video from Zora highlighted examples such as the $redlight and $coldplunge Pairs nested under the $longevity Trend, illustrating how the system operates in practice.

Users have quickly begun experimenting with the application, with popular tickers including “attentionmarkets,” “longevity,” “cats,” “dogs,” “bitcoin,” and “aigirlfriend” leading the trading activity right from the start.

This dashboard image showcases the top-performing attention market trends. The platform allows users to trade both Trends and Pairs just like standard tokens, complete with a real-time dashboard that monitors profits and losses dynamically.

Following the announcement, the ZORA token experienced a notable uptick, climbing 6.2% to reach $0.022 within the past 24 hours. This gain stood in contrast to the broader cryptocurrency market, which dipped by 1.2% during the same period.

Zora’s rollout of attention markets arrives at an opportune moment, paralleling the explosive growth of prediction markets. These markets now routinely exceed $10 billion in monthly trading volume and are gaining traction with mainstream audiences through targeted marketing efforts.

On Monday, Zora shared a job posting for an “Attention Economist,” seeking a candidate deeply immersed in online culture. The role involves anticipating future trends by monitoring cultural shifts on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and X, identifying what’s next even before it gains a formal name.

Base Community Voices Disappointment Over Zora’s Solana Shift

The decision to integrate with Solana has sparked backlash from parts of the Base community. This reaction stems from Zora’s significant migration of activities from its original platform to Base last year, including the debut of its inaugural token on Base in April.

Furthermore, Zora played a pivotal role in launching Creator Coins tied to Base profiles back in July. This initiative even propelled Base to surpass Solana in daily token creation volume later that same month.

Jacek Trociński, the developer behind the Base memecoin Degen, expressed strong frustration, calling it “really disappointing” to witness Zora pivoting to Solana for its attention-markets platform.

He elaborated: “After getting support from the entire Base team for the better part of a year, they capitulated the second the trade changed. Low conviction, questionable morals, rinse users and repeat.”

Another voice from the community, Veil Cash builder Apex777.eth, echoed similar sentiments: “We had to put up with your… stuff for 9 months, extracted every penny from Base with a broken model and now a final pivot to a pump clone on Solana.”

In response, Base creator Jesse Pollak pointed out that Zora’s creator tools are still fully functional on Base. He expressed positivity about Zora’s ongoing experiments aimed at expanding the overall onchain ecosystem.

Zora made the ZORA token available on Solana in January, and its X profile now lists its location as “Solana.” The platform has also ceased posting about Base for several months. Despite these changes, Zora has not issued any official statement confirming a complete departure from Base. Cointelegraph contacted Zora for further clarification but has not yet received a reply.