Base’s Cobalt lets traders set transaction conditions while giving issuers tools for compliance checks, stock splits and forced token transfers. Base activated its Cobalt upgrade Wednesday, adding conditional transactions and new issuer controls for tokenized assets as the Ethereum layer-2 network deepens its push into onchain finance. Cobalt, Base’s third major upgrade, expands its B20 token standard by allowing issuers to apply several compliance checks to the same asset. For example, an issuer could require recipients to pass identity checks, qualify as accredited investors and not appear on a sanctions list. Issuers can also schedule adjustments for corporate actions such as stock splits. The update changes the number of shares displayed in wallets and apps without minting or burning tokens or altering the underlying balance. Read more
Trueo said Base was the right choice when it launched, as Ethereum gas fees were higher, but said mainnet now offers greater integration potential. Prediction market platform Trueo plans to migrate from Base to Ethereum, citing broader integration opportunities and plans to build the next iteration of its oracle system. The project, which launched on Base in March 2025, said its priority after the migration will be attracting liquidity and launching the next generation of its oracle, the system used to verify real-world outcomes that are used to resolve prediction markets. Trueo said it chose to move from Base to Ethereum because it offered higher integration potential and product upside, while on Base, integrations are limited to the immediate ecosystem. Read more
Ethereum and Base are pursuing different account abstraction designs after talks failed, according to Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang. Ethereum and Base are set to implement different account abstraction standards after efforts to agree on a shared account abstraction standard broke down last week. Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain’s core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and “putting the burden on wallets,” Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs, as well as a co-author of Ethereum’s EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post. The divergence could require wallet developers to support separate transaction formats to provide a consistent experience across networks. Account abstraction allows programmable rules for authorizing transactions and paying fees. Read more
Coinbase’s B20 equities bring stocks including Apple and Nvidia onchain, allowing eligible non-US users to trade them 24/7 and use them across DeFi. Coinbase’s tokenized US stocks went live on Base Monday, alongside a Chainlink integration providing price data to support their use across decentralized finance applications. Chainlink Data Feeds will provide continuous pricing for Coinbase’s tokenized stocks, including Nvidia, Apple, Meta and Alphabet. The data allows DeFi protocols to integrate the assets into lending markets, decentralized exchanges and structured products, including as collateral for borrowing. According to Chainlink’s documentation, the feeds value each token using the underlying stock price and a Coinbase-supplied multiplier that accounts for dividends and corporate actions. Read more
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says AI agents will expand crypto adoption, pointing to Base, USDC and x402 as key pieces of agentic finance. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is pushing back against calls for crypto to pivot to artificial intelligence, arguing AI agents will instead stoke demand for crypto-based financial services. Armstrong took to X on Sunday to tout agentic finance (AiFi), highlighting Coinbase’s Base network, USDC and x402 as the infrastructure for autonomous machine-to-machine payments. “AI being a megatrend takes nothing away from crypto,” Armstrong wrote, because AI agents will need programmable money rather than traditional banking rails. “If anything, it makes crypto more important,” he added. Read more
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
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
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
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