Base | Crypto

Morpho Midnight introduces fixed rates and defined maturities alongside Morpho Blue’s variable-rate lending markets. Lending protocol Morpho has launched Morpho Midnight on Base, adding fixed-rate, fixed-term loans to its onchain credit network alongside the variable-rate markets offered through Morpho Blue.  In an announcement sent to Cointelegraph, Morpho said the offer-driven protocol lets lenders and borrowers propose their own interest rates, maturities and other loan terms instead of relying on a protocol-defined utilization curve. Loans are issued as fixed obligations, with terms set through competing offers rather than algorithmic pool pricing.  Predictable rates and defined maturities are standard features of traditional credit markets. However, they remain uncommon in decentralized finance (DeFi), where borrowing costs generally fluctuate based on market utilization. Fixed terms could make onchain lending more attractive to institutions and businesses that need to manage funding costs, returns and r...

The Coinbase-backed Ethereum layer-2 is preparing to expand its financial offerings as it pivots away from its earlier social-first strategy. Base is close to launching 1:1-backed tokenized equities, according to Jesse Pollak, creator of Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network. Pollak said in a Tuesday X post that Robinhood Chain, the recently launched Ethereum layer 2, had gotten tokenized equities in an EVM environment right, adding that Base was behind on that front. Lazer Technologies head of fintech Garrett Skrovina asked about the timeline for launching 1:1-backed equities on Base, to which Pollak replied: “Imminent — dotting i’s and crossing t’s, but should be very soon.” Read more

Coinbase is reshaping its Ethereum layer-2 network, Base, around trading, payments and tokenized assets as Robinhood’s new blockchain rapidly gains users and liquidity in many of the same markets. On July 15, Base creator Jesse Pollak acknowledged that the network’s earlier emphasis on social products had allowed it to lose ground in several of crypto’s […] The post Robinhood tackled Coinbase head-on then immediately inherited Base’s biggest problem appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Base creator Jesse Pollak is stepping back from leadership of the Base App after admitting he was “definitively wrong” to bet on social experiences driving crypto adoption. Base creator Jesse Pollak says he is stepping back from leading the Base App after admitting he made a “wrong bet” on social, leaving the chain to fall behind on prediction markets and perpetual futures.  In a post to X on Wednesday, Pollak said he had bet that creator, content and messaging apps would drive adoption, but instead the market “disintegrated completely.”  “We realized how our focus on social had meant that base had fallen behind in key areas that were now increasingly critical — we had perps (shoutout avantis!) and prediction markets (shoutout limitless!), but both were well behind scaled competitors.” Read more

Pollak said that Jordan Fish, also known on X as 'Cobie,' will lead the Base app team.

Base is scheduled to activate its B20 token standard on Wednesday at 6 pm UTC, allowing developers to begin creating native tokens on the network. Coinbase-backed Ethereum layer-2 network Base is set to activate its B20 token standard on mainnet, introducing a native framework for stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and other fungible tokens.  According to Base documentation, B20 is scheduled to go live at 6 pm UTC on the mainnet, enabling developers to begin creating tokens under the new standard. The activation will enable developers to use Base's native token standard to create stablecoins, RWAs, tokenized equities and other fungible tokens without requiring them to build and audit custom ERC-20 contracts. Read more

Visa's adjusted June data shows L2s competing for the dollar flows that could define crypto payments. The post Ethereum is losing ownership of crypto payments as Base moves $565B in stablecoins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Moonbeam didn’t provide a timeline for when it would launch the AI agent platform but told GLMR holders to bridge their tokens from the Polkadot parachain to Base before July 31. Polkadot-based interoperability protocol Moonbeam said it is pivoting to Ethereum layer 2 Base to launch an AI agent communication and settlement network, aimed at capturing a share of the emerging market.  “This is a pivot to the most exciting frontier in crypto: autonomous AI agents that find each other, negotiate work, and pay each other entirely on-chain, without a middleman,” Moonbeam said in a statement announcing the Moonbeam Protocol on Friday.  “We believe AI-native on-chain coordination represents a significant long-term opportunity. This transition allows us to focus resources around that direction,” Moonbeam added. Read more

A “race condition” after the system was reset prevented the sequencers from catching up, causing the second outage. A sequencer bug was responsible for two outages of the Coinbase layer-2 network Base last week, according to a post-mortem published on Saturday. In a blog, the Base engineering team said they identified a bug in sequencer block-building logic that allowed “stale journal state” to persist after a transaction validation failure.  “An invalid transaction was received by the block builder and failed during execution, as expected, but erroneously did not clear the journal state that contained the accounts and storage slots that had been accessed,” said the team. Read more

Coinbase's blockchain Base says a consensus problem knocked its network offline for around two hours on Thursday before it returned online. Base, the blockchain backed by crypto exchange Coinbase, has returned online after the network suffered nearly a two-hour outage due to a consensus issue that halted block production. Base posted to X on Thursday after the outage that the network’s blocks “are being produced normally, and we have verified widespread recovery in the ecosystem.” Base’s status page said it was investigating “unhealthy” block production at 4:03 pm UTC on Thursday. At 5:21 pm UTC the team said it “isolated a consensus problem that caused an invalid block to be sequenced. This prevented new blocks from being created.” Read more

Travala’s new protocol lets AI agents search and book hotels with USDC on Base, but travelers still approve the final payment. Singapore-based crypto travel platform Travala has launched a protocol it says lets artificial intelligence agents search, reserve and pay for hotels with USDC (USDC) on layer-2 blockchain Base, extending agentic AI stablecoin payments into travel bookings. The Travala Travel MCP is live through Claude Desktop, with outside developers able to integrate it into their own travel agents, Travala said in a statement sent to Cointelegraph. The company said the system connects Travala’s hotel inventory to AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for linking AI apps to external tools. Payments use Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base, with Travala saying the setup allows gasless USDC transactions, near-instant settlement and transaction costs of about $0.01 per booking. Read more

New data suggests AI-driven payment rails are evolving beyond experimentation as users are making more higher-value transfers. Agentic payment activity on Coinbase’s Base network has surpassed 100 million transactions, signaling that machine-to-machine payments are moving beyond the proof-of-concept stage in onchain environments. According to a new Chainalysis report, wallets interacting with Coinbase's x402 protocol generated more than 100 million transactions on Base within roughly nine months of launch. The x402 protocol allows software agents to make onchain payments directly through web requests. When an agent requests access to a resource, such as a data feed or API, it can automatically complete a stablecoin payment without human authorization. Read more

The product, called Base MCP, connects a user’s Base Account to AI clients such as ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an emerging standard that allows AI systems to securely interface with external tools and applications.

Visa broadens its crypto pilot to nine blockchains as stablecoin volumes grow, highlighting early traction for onchain settlement in global payments. Global payments giant Visa has expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to include Polygon and four other blockchain networks, signaling continued experimentation with crypto-based payment infrastructure. The pilot, launched by Visa in 2023, allows partners to settle transactions using stablecoins rather than traditional banking rails. Newly supported networks include Polygon, Base, the Canton Network, Arc and Tempo. They join existing supported chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Stellar and Avalanche. The expansion comes as the program has reached an annualized settlement run rate of roughly $7 billion, growing about 50% quarter over quarter, according to Visa. Despite that growth, volume remains small compared to the company’s core payments business. Read more

Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 Base said it will be upgrading its chain to allow AI agents to use it the same way developers or traders would. Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network Base said it is upgrading key systems in preparation for an AI agent economy as part of its newly released 2026 roadmap, joining the race to support the growing agentic AI ecosystem.  AI agents are discovering crypto markets as their native economy, “building, owning, and trading alongside us,” said Base in its 2026 mission, vision, and strategy update on Tuesday.  Base added that its goal is to build a foundation for an AI agent economy by focusing on building global markets, scaling payments and stablecoins and attracting more developers.  Read more

The Bitcoin lending protocol will allocate 2.25% of its token supply to Aerodrome users as it looks to expand activity for its token and stablecoin. Mezo, a Bitcoin-native lending protocol, will collaborate with Aerodrome Finance to support trading activity for its token and Bitcoin-backed stablecoin on the Base network, as projects look for ways to bring more financial use cases to Bitcoin. In a Thursday announcement, Mezo said it will allocate 2.25% of its MEZO token supply to Aerodrome’s vote-escrow (veAERO) participants — users who lock tokens in exchange for governance rights and rewards. The program is designed to encourage those users to direct funds into MEZO trading pairs, increasing activity around the token and its US dollar-backed stablecoin, MUSD. Aerodrome is a liquidity provider on Base built by the team behind Optimism, a configurable enterprise blockchain infrastructure. Read more

Omnes and Apex plan to issue a tokenized Bitcoin mining debt note on Base, giving eligible non-US investors exposure to hashrate-linked returns. Financial technology company Omnes and financial services provider Apex Group said on Tuesday that they plan to issue a tokenized secured debt note backed by Bitcoin hashrate on Base. The two companies announced that they would tokenize the Omnes Mining Note (OMN), an institutional-grade structured note backed by the Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate. The companies said it will be issued and managed on the Base blockchain, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network. Apex said the note is designed to give institutional investors “direct economic exposure to new Bitcoin production measured in hashrate” without the operational burden of managing mining hardware, energy procurement and facilities. Read more

The system enables AI agents to automatically pay for blockchain data and compute credits in USDC, as autonomous crypto applications gain traction. Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has launched a system that allows autonomous AI agents to buy compute credits and access its blockchain data services using onchain wallets and USDC on Base. According to the company’s announcement, the initial release allows AI agents to directly query blockchain networks, check nonfungible token (NFT) ownership, view wallet balances across multiple chains and access live token price data, with additional networks and services planned. If an agent exhausts its prepaid compute credits, Alchemy issues a payment request that can be automatically settled in USDC (USDC) on Base, allowing the agent to continue operating without human intervention. Read more

Base rode SocialFi, memecoins and AI agents to the top of Ethereum’s layer-2 ladder before turning inward to rebuild its core stack. Base will transition to a unified, internally maintained stack, expected to be its biggest architectural shift since launch. After debuting in 2023 as a rollup built on Optimism’s OP Stack, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer 2 is now consolidating its software into an in-house distribution, which can unlock faster upgrades and greater autonomy over its technical roadmap. It has been three years since Base launched its testnet. The network has experienced SocialFi explosions and ridden its own memecoin wave. It even went through a phase that both fascinated and unnerved Crypto Twitter as AI agents began transacting on its chain. Read more

The Base engineering team said the protocol would remain open-source and encouraged developers to continue building unique implementations. Base, a decentralized Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, said Wednesday that it is transitioning from running on L2 blockchain protocol Optimism’s tech stack to running on its own, unified software architecture. Launched in 2023 as an Optimism chain, Base is shifting to its own tech stack to reduce dependencies on external service providers and shorten the time it takes to ship new upgrades, according to an announcement from Base. The team said: The transition is also expected to simplify the Base network’s sequencer, which helps network validators to order transactions, the Base engineering team said.  Read more