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Base App alternatives for group chat and mini apps

Five Base App alternatives for Base communities, judged on token-gated chat, wallet model, mini apps and Solana reach, with a rule for choosing one.

Cherry Team Published Updated 12 min read

You look for a Base App alternative when your community needs a group chat that verifies who holds what and the app you are in does not. The question got sharper on September 10 2026, when Coinbase renamed Base App back to Coinbase Wallet and pitched it as a self-custodial trading app. XMTP chat is still inside; the Farcaster feed went in February 2026. Cherry (cherry.fun) is one of the five options below and we build it: a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app where you sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated, and paid group chats.

How we picked

Each option runs group chat as a primary surface, reaches Base holders, and is public today. We compared six things: whether the app verifies ERC-20 or NFT holdings on Base at join and re-checks later, without a verify bot; whether members keep the wallet their bags are in; paid access and the owner’s share; owner, admin, and moderator tooling; mini apps and bots inside the chat; and reach into Solana and Seeker. Pure wallets without chat and feed-only social apps are out.

Coinbase Wallet, the former Base App

Coinbase renamed Coinbase Wallet to Base App on July 16 2025, pitching an “everything app” with a Farcaster feed, XMTP chat, mini apps, payments, and trading. It opened to everyone on December 17 2025. Coinbase announced on February 9 2026 that it was dropping the Talk feed and winding down Creator Rewards, with final payouts later that month. On September 10 2026 the name went back to Coinbase Wallet, which Coinbase’s head of wallet product told The Block “better captures the product’s role as Coinbase’s self-custodial front door to the ’everything exchange’”. That day wallet.coinbase.com led with “Trade everything from crypto, stocks, commodities, predictions and perps”, with no mention of chat, feed, or mini apps, and base.app redirected there. Decrypt reported Hyperliquid perps and tokenized stocks across multiple chains including Solana and Robinhood Chain, the home page adds predictions, and CryptoSlate’s review, updated July 24 2026, lists eleven native networks.

Chat did not disappear. On September 10 2026 the App Store listing still promised “DMs, group chats, and AI agents - all encrypted, private and secure”, messaging runs on XMTP, and mini apps follow the Farcaster specification and Coinbase’s MiniKit. The wallet is the account: a smart wallet made with a passkey and email, or a seed-phrase wallet. Coinbase does not advertise token-gated rooms, paid memberships, admin roles, bans, storefront pages, a bot API, or an embeddable widget, so a community owner who needs any of those should ask Coinbase before planning around them.

Fit: stay if your members want one self-custodial app for trading across chains plus small encrypted group chats, with no gating or moderator roles. The Cherry vs Base App page goes head to head.

Towns

Towns is an onchain group chat app on Base, running on its own node network. Every group (“a Town”) is minted on-chain and every membership is an NFT. Each account gets an embedded wallet, with WalletConnect sign-in since November 2025. The money stack shipped in stages between April 2025 and January 2026: in-chat trading of Base and Solana tokens, a 0.25% trade-fee split to owners, recurring USDC memberships with Apple Pay deposits, and Hyperliquid perps and Polymarket in chat. Towns said in 2025 that owners keep 90% of paid memberships; bots with wallets, including ModBot for verification, shipped in October 2025. Towns reported 450,000+ groups and 1.7M memberships on February 13 2026, the same membership figure it gave in August 2025, and says it has raised $46M with a16z crypto as lead. The rebuilt iOS app of February 27 2026 is “new app, new account”, built around smaller groups of friends, while large communities stay on the web app.

Fit: the closest feature match for a paid or NFT-gated Base community that wants memberships as on-chain assets. Check the web-app and iOS-app split before moving a large community; Solana appears only in token trading, with no Solana identity.

The Farcaster app and other Farcaster clients

Farcaster is a social protocol with a flagship client, called Warpcast until May 2025, run by Neynar since it bought the protocol, the client, and the Clanker launchpad from Merkle on January 23 2026. Base App was itself a Farcaster client until it dropped the feed, so a community that lived there finds the same casts and channels here: /base alone had 481,230 followers on September 11 2026. It is feed-first: casts, channels, Spaces for live audio (May 2026), DMs, and mini apps that run in the feed. Sign-up is free since September 2025, with email or phone, and each account gets an embedded wallet that trades on Base, Solana, BSC, Monad, and Robinhood Chain. Coin-gated communities exist through third-party mini apps such as Calaxy WORLDS, not as a native room type.

Fit: pick it if your community is a public conversation discovered through casts, and you already build to the Farcaster mini app standard. Skip it if you need a private, gated room with roles. The Cherry vs Farcaster page goes deeper.

Cherry

Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, built by Cherry Technologies, S.A., with a web app at chat.cherry.fun, iOS and Android apps, and a listing on the Solana dApp Store for the Seeker phone. Your wallet is your account: no phone number, email, or KYC. Cherry started on Solana and also supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Robinhood Chain, so a Base community gets token-gated chats for ERC-20 holders, NFT-gated rooms for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 collections, and DMs to any Base or Ethereum address . Cherry checks the chain itself: a group combines up to five rules with all-or-any logic across seven rule types, gated public groups are re-verified in the background, and selling below the threshold ends access. Nobody DMs your members a verify link. Paid access is a one-time fee of 0.0001 to 100 SOL or a USDC subscription of 1 to 10,000 USDC per period, 70% of it to the owner as of 10 September 2026, and every public group gets a storefront at chat.cherry.fun/@<handle> that search engines index.

Mini apps run inside the chat with the user’s wallet and room context, on iOS, Android, web, and Seeker; as of September 2026 the Mini App SDK also runs inside Solflare, Mattle.fun, SeekerGram, and Seeker Legends. Cherry runs two itself: the Trading Terminal for spot swaps, perps, and tokenized stocks (160 members on 11 September 2026) and prediction markets via the Polymarket mini app (978 members). A trade another member shares in the chat can be copied in one tap through Cherry’s swap flow. The free Chat Embed SDK drops a room into any site. By September 2026, Cherry has 200+ communities and 1M+ messages, and ranks #1 on the Seeker dApp Store with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews. Seeker Club, gated by a .skr domain, had 8,637 members on 11 September 2026.

Two caveats: group chats are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderators and bots can read what they moderate (DMs are, with keys from your wallet), and Cherry’s depth is Solana-first, with paid entry and subscriptions billing on Solana as of 11 September 2026.

Fit: pick Cherry if gating has to be checked by the app on both Base and Solana, members keep their own wallet, and mini apps or an embed must reach Seeker owners. Skip it if you need end-to-end encrypted group chat or memberships that trade as NFTs.

Telegram or Discord with Collab.Land

Collab.Land is the incumbent way to gate a Telegram or Discord community by token. Its site says it has served “tens of thousands of communities” since spring 2020, verifies that “every new member holds the necessary token(s) to join”, and performs “regular re-verifications”. The mechanism is a bot: the member connects a wallet on a Collab.Land page, the bot grants a role, and re-verification runs on a schedule. Telegram adds no wallet identity, so anyone can DM your members and screenshots stand in for proof of holdings. Guild.xyz and Matrica have the same shape.

Fit: stay if your members will not leave and you accept a verify bot, a wallet-connect site, and the impersonation DMs that follow every announcement. Paid access and in-chat trading need further bots.

Side by side

RowCoinbase Wallet (ex-Base App)TownsFarcaster appCherryTelegram/Discord + Collab.Land
Chains11 native, incl. Base, Ethereum, SolanaBase; trades Base and Solana tokensBase, Solana, BSC, Monad, Robinhood ChainSolana, Base, Ethereum, BSC, Robinhood Chain40+ via the bot
Wallet modelEmbedded smart wallet or seed phraseEmbedded; WalletConnect since Nov 2025Embedded (FID account)Bring your own wallet; the wallet is the accountYour own, on a verify page
OnboardingEmail + passkeyiOS app needs a new accountFree; email or phoneOne signed message; no phone, email, or KYCChat account plus the bot
DMs and encryptionXMTP DMs, described as encryptedE2EE, Towns saysDMs; encryption not statedE2EE DMs, keys from your wallet; groups not E2EE by designNo wallet identity
Group chatsXMTP groups; public vs private not statedChannels, threads, voiceChannels in a feedPublic, private, gated; owner, admin, moderator rolesBot-granted roles
Token/NFT gatingNot statedToken- and NFT-gated Towns, on-chainThird-party mini apps7 rule types, up to 5 per group, all/any, re-verified in the backgroundBot checks at join and on a schedule
Paid memberships and owner shareNot statedOne-off or recurring USDC; ~90% to owner (2025)Not stated for communities0.0001–100 SOL once, or 1–10,000 USDC per period; owner keeps 70%Needs extra bots
Trading, perps, prediction marketsShared trades with AI agents; Hyperliquid perps, predictions$ticker to chart to buy; Hyperliquid perps, PolymarketSwaps in the wallet$TICKER cards and Jupiter Swap on web, copy a trade shared in the chat; prediction markets via the Polymarket mini app; perps and tokenized stocks via the Trading Terminal mini appThird-party bots
Mini apps, bots, embeddingFarcaster spec + MiniKit; bot API and embedding not statedMini apps and bots with wallets; embedding not statedMini apps in the feed; Neynar APIsMini apps in chat, SDK live in four third-party apps, Cherry API and bots, Chat Embed SDK, all freeTelegram Mini Apps; gating bots
MobileiOS, Android, web; no Seeker statediOS, Android, web; no Seeker statediOS, Android, web; no Seeker statediOS, Android, web, Solana dApp Store (Seeker)iOS, Android, web, desktop
Fees to ownersn/a0.25% of trades in the Townn/aFree; Cherry keeps 30% of paid-community paymentsCollab.Land plans
ModerationWallet spam filteringRoles, ModBotChannel moderationRoles, kick, ban, mute, word blacklist, wallet-age gateDiscord roles; Telegram tools

Which Base App alternative to pick

  • Choose Coinbase Wallet if trading across chains is the point and chat is a side room.
  • Choose Towns if memberships as on-chain NFTs matter more than Solana reach.
  • Choose the Farcaster app if your community is a public feed and you build to its mini app standard.
  • Choose Cherry if the app itself has to check holdings on Base and Solana and you want a storefront for paid access.
  • Stay on Telegram or Discord with Collab.Land if moving your members is off the table.

To try the Cherry side, create a group at chat.cherry.fun , add an ERC-20 or NFT rule for your Base collection, and share the @handle. More on the about page .

FAQ

Does Base App have token-gated chat?

Coinbase has not announced it. The app, renamed back to Coinbase Wallet on September 10 2026, offers DMs, group chats, and AI agents over XMTP, which its App Store listing that day called “encrypted, private and secure”. Coinbase does not advertise gating a group by token or NFT holdings, paid memberships, or admin roles. Towns and Cherry both check the chain.

What is the best group chat for Base communities?

It depends on what you gate on and where your members are. Towns mints each group on Base with NFT memberships and USDC pricing. Cherry checks ERC-20 and NFT holdings on Base at join, re-verifies in the background, and reaches Solana and Seeker users too. Telegram with Collab.Land is the incumbent if your members will not move.

Can I chat wallet to wallet on Base?

Yes. Coinbase Wallet (the former Base App) does it over XMTP, where the recipient needs an XMTP identity. On Cherry you DM any Ethereum or Base address, the conversation waits even if the recipient has never signed in, and DMs are end-to-end encrypted with keys from your wallet.

Does Base App still have a social feed?

No. Coinbase announced on February 9 2026 that it was dropping the Talk feed and winding down Creator Rewards, with final payouts later that month. The Block, reporting on February 10 2026, put Creator Rewards at more than $450,000 paid to about 17,000 creators over six months.

Do Base App mini apps work on Solana?

Base App mini apps follow the Farcaster mini app standard and Coinbase’s MiniKit, and Coinbase does not mention a route to Solana phones such as Seeker. Cherry mini apps run inside chats on iOS, Android, web, and the Solana dApp Store for Seeker.

Sources

Try Cherry

Sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join token-gated and paid communities. No phone number, email, or KYC.

Open app For developers