ZORA: Fundamental Divergence

Introduction

ZORA (along with AERO) has acted as a proxy exposure to the Base ecosystem since the Base App was unveiled on July 16. As seen below, ZORA is up over 500% since then, significantly outperforming the broader crypto market.

On September 15,  Jesse Pollak disclosed at BaseCamp 2025 that Base is exploring the possibility of launching a network token for the L2. ZORA surged about 30% after the announcement, reaching an intraday high of $0.089 and cooling off slightly to $0.078 as of writing. In addition, expectations around an airdrop could boost activity on the platform.

While attention centered on Base’s potential token, Zora made an announcement of its own that went mostly unnoticed: the team updated the fee structure for its Uniswap V4 hook, with trading fees for both “Content” and “Creator” coins reduced from 3% to 1%, unifying the fee structure while boosting creators’ portion of the fee split.

This report evaluates Zora’s competitive positioning against Pump in light of the new fee structure, modeling revenue and a relative valuation. We conclude that ZORA is significantly diverging from its underlying fundamentals, with near-term headwinds coming in the form of decreasing margins and token unlocks.

Decreasing Margins & Creator Rewards