The Basis for Basedness

It's "onchain summer" and the Base hype is inescapable. To dissect this surging phenomenon, Splits spoke with Turkish designer eneowaith.eth, AKA @basedeneo, or simply Eneo — a prolific contributor to the Base community.

Eneo's elegant, energizing visuals can be found across Zora, Farcaster, and X, where he spreads an earnest message of cheerful persistence. Eneo promulgates radical faith in doing the damn thing, trusting that dedicated effort will pay off in ways you can hardly imagine now.

I met Eneo through a mutual fascination with Higher. The distinctive beauty of his personal aesthetic impressed me, paired with his ability to create a lot without sacrificing quality. These dual strengths are a hallmark of Higher designers, in fact; Eneo's participation in the scene showcases his savvy as an internet operative. Eneo follows that crucial instinct to remix ideas with a group of peers who fluidly collaborate by aligning on a handful of key memes. (Higher together, innit?)

Eneo's pre-crypto portfolio demonstrates the seeds of his current work — bold typography embedded in dynamic, multilayered images, constructing a visual landscape that balances high-tech geometry with organic flow. Today Eneo's combination of polished taste and rapid execution continues to unfurl in the fast-paced social context of permissionless onchain organizations.

So tl;dr, Eneo is great, I love his stuff. But here's the burning question that motivated me to interview him: How did Base attract this caliber of creator, and reward him for joining the movement? Every web3 / crypto / DeFi / whatever founder wants what Base has in terms of community mindshare. Is it possible to replicate without a Coinbase-tier marketing budget?

Maybe yes, maybe no — probably a bit of both. Let's see.

Eneo in his own words#

My name is Can. I'm 24-year-old guy from Turkey.

My crypto journey began with Solana in 2021. I worked as a moderator for an NFT project, managing social media designs. I found this position by getting into NFTs. The project had pixel art that I really liked. I was making weekly statistic visuals and headers for people. Then the founders offered me a job, and I accepted. I started as a moderator on the project and also took on design tasks.

As Solana dropped to $8, the project went bankrupt. I needed money, so I returned to full-time graphic design work. Then at the beginning of 2024, I quit the job I had been working for a year and returned to crypto. I frequently heard about Degen and Base, and first became active on the Degen chain, then on Base, where I started creating and exploring.

I began sharing typographic and completely freestyle works on Zora. After a while, I also started sharing these on Twitter. Jesse Pollak really liked one of them, followed, and started supporting me. With this support, I continued to produce, and my third NFT related to Base was both shared by Base and added as a quest on Layer3.

That NFT has currently minted around 35,000. This significantly changed my life, bringing me incredible financial comfort. I had the chance to earn more money than I could possibly save working for years in my country and profession. Now, I'm trying to build a career by managing the money I earned and continuing to pursue opportunities within crypto.

I think Base has a youthful energy. Others just focus on tech and docs, but Base is focusing on community more and updating daily. So it's worth trying to build on Base. That's what people think and that's why Base is successful IMO.

The best of us, the rest of us#

(Sonya again.)

Nothing is a coincidence. Eneo's success as a creator testifies to the power of the grind. Talent is essential, but it is not enough. You have to show up, and keep showing up. As the quip goes, every "overnight success" is a decade in the making. But if you're sufficiently good and you keep connecting with the right people, eventually serendipity will come for you.

Regarding how Base has taken off, the conclusion I drew from Eneo's story is that monetary incentives for creators are effective, but not in isolation. Notice that Eneo was creating for Base before he ever expected to make money from it. The simpatico ethos was the initial draw; passion gave him material to work with, material he wanted to work with. Getting paid has enabled him to step up his engagement.

Nothing beats a worthwhile mission. Except a worthwhile mission and cash.