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Coinbase is undergoing its most significant executive reshuffle in recent years. Chief People Officer Lawrence Brock has stepped down and transitioned to an advisory role; Greg Tusar, co-head of the institutional division, has moved to a policy position; previously, General Counsel Paul Grewal had planned to leave, and Jesse Pollak stepped down as head of the Base app. After cutting 14% of its workforce in May, Coinbase is accelerating its transformation into an all-asset trading platform encompassing stocks and prediction markets.
LayerZero has announced a partnership with Keeta to support the transfer of tokenized commercial bank deposits across public chains including Keeta Network, Ethereum, Solana, and Base, aiming to provide institutional cross-chain settlement infrastructure.According to the announcement, the two parties will combine LayerZero's omnichain interoperability protocol with Keeta's compliance infrastructure to support institutions in fund management and payment operations. The newly introduced Keeta Stablecoins are backed by commercial bank deposits custodied by Bivo, a licensed fintech platform in the United States. Unlike traditional stablecoins, they correspond to real commercial bank deposits and allow the issuer to maintain control over the contract through LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard.Keeta Stablecoins will launch later this month, initially supporting the US dollar, with future expansions to include the Euro, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Mexican Peso, UAE Dirham, Hong Kong Dollar, and other fiat currencies. (The Block)
Coinbase has announced a partnership with Mubadala Capital, part of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and KAIO, a tokenization infrastructure provider, to issue compliant on-chain tokens for Mubadala's evergreen private market fund, open to qualified investors.Coinbase will not only support the token issuance through the Base network but will also purchase the token and include it on its corporate balance sheet, marking the first time a major US-listed company has used a regulated tokenized real-world asset (RWA) for native on-chain treasury management. The product will also be deployed on the Solana and Sui networks, with KAIO providing compliant tokenization infrastructure. To date, the project has attracted approximately $75 million in funds, while Mubadala manages assets nearing $400 billion. (Fortune)
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has responded to recent controversy surrounding his X account profile picture change and claims that the Base community is "unsupported." He thanked the community for their feedback and acknowledged that his previous communication regarding expectations was not clear enough. Users should not interpret the content of his personal X account as investment advice or signals for individual tokens. He stated that he simply shares internet content he finds interesting or amusing, and may not even be aware whether such content is associated with any particular token or project. He pointed out that his tweets and profile picture changes do not represent endorsements of or commitments to any project.Regarding support for the Base ecosystem, Brian Armstrong explained that Base aims to build financial services infrastructure, supporting various application scenarios including stock tokenization, lending protocols, stablecoin payments, and Meme coin trading. Coinbase supports users in freely trading assets but will not use its official influence to "pump" or promote specific tokens. Both Coinbase and the Base team are indeed subject to compliance and regulatory restrictions, preventing them from listing certain tokens on the centralized exchange and from marketing specific projects at the community's request.Base currently supports ecosystem development primarily through offline Base Batches events, developer grant programs, and investments from Coinbase Ventures and the Base Ecosystem Fund. Additionally, based on long-term user value assessment, Coinbase may integrate certain Base ecosystem DeFi protocols into its own products to help projects expand distribution.Brian Armstrong stated that Coinbase will continue to prioritize projects capable of creating long-term user value in the future, and expressed hope that this clarification will help the community set clearer expectations. He added that he may still continue to post Meme content he finds interesting, but such content will not constitute investment advice.
Odaily News: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that self-custody wallets are the only way to bring the open financial system to over 1 billion users. He pointed out that alternatives like the Coinbase App work well in developed countries with clearer regulations, but the U.S. only accounts for 4% of the global population. Armstrong noted that self-custody reduces friction in account opening and registration, is globally accessible, and scales via software, rather than requiring regulated entities and local teams in every country. He also added that AI agents adopting self-custody forms are better suited to access funds and complete tasks, and that even in developed nations, self-custody is crucial for economic freedom. Former Base lead Jesse Pollak previously announced his departure, handing over Base to Jordan Fish. Pollak stated that Base will be built as a global financial blockchain. Under Cobie's leadership, Base will pivot towards three core areas: trading, payments, and agents.
According to Visa's official website, Visa and Artemis jointly released a report that deeply analyzes the current status and trends of AI agent payments based on real-time on-chain data. The report indicates that AI agent payments are divided into two categories: one is "macro commerce" where agents replace users to complete tasks like booking tickets and subscriptions, similar to traditional e-commerce payments; the other is "micro commerce" such as high-frequency, low-value API calls between software, where single transaction amounts are typically less than 1 cent. On-chain data shows that the open protocol x402, incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and now hosted by the Linux Foundation, has processed approximately 109 million transactions since launching in May 2025, with an adjusted transaction volume of about $15 million, mainly active on the Base, Solana, and Polygon chains; the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), jointly built by Stripe and Tempo with Visa's contribution, launched in mid-March 2026 and completed approximately 115,000 transactions within weeks, with a settlement amount of about $25,000. The report notes that blockchain settlement costs have dropped to extremely low levels, making small payments in the 1-cent to 1-dollar range economically feasible for the first time, but agent payments still face significant challenges at the legal and regulatory level regarding trust, liability attribution, and dispute resolution. Visa stated that its goal is to build a unified foundation that simultaneously supports card-native trust authorization and machine-native settlement
the Ethereum Layer 2 network Base mainnet experienced a "major failure," leading to unstable production of new blocks. According to the Base status page, the issue began around 16:03 UTC.Base resumed operations after approximately two hours of downtime. This failure previously halted block production and transaction processing.The Base team stated that an invalid block triggered the related issue. They are currently investigating the root cause and recommend that node operators restart their nodes. This incident marks another network interruption for Base following its previous downtime in August 2025.
Digital asset company AllUnity has launched SEKAU, a stablecoin backed by the Swedish Krona. The token is issued in accordance with the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and operates as an electronic money token under MiCA.SEKAU is backed by segregated Swedish Krona reserves and is designed for institutional settlement and cross-border payments. Banking Circle will hold and manage the reserves backing the token, with Sweden's Marginalen Bank serving as the banking partner for the launch, while Trust Anchor Group provides infrastructure integration.SEKAU's initial launch covers five blockchain networks: Ethereum, Solana, Base, Tempo, and Polygon. AllUnity stated that it plans to expand SEKAU to more blockchain networks later in 2026. (Cointelegraph)
Brian Armstrong posted on the X platform, stating that Coinbase now includes pre-IPO perpetual contracts, stock options, and will soon support tokenized stocks. Coinbase has also redesigned Coinbase Advanced and has begun integrating global liquidity between US and international users, as well as between Coinbase and Deribit users. CoinbaseDev is providing stablecoin payment capabilities for enterprises, launching fully managed accounts based on its compliance technology stack, and introducing a new developer tools dashboard. On the Base side, Coinbase announced the launch of private transactions and a web-based Base App. Coinbase is also becoming the financial account for AI, supporting wallets for AI agents, providing AI-driven financial advice, and connecting Coinbase accounts to users' commonly used LLMs.
Benchmark has maintained a "Buy" rating for Coinbase with a $270 price target, implying approximately 59.5% upside from its Tuesday closing price of $169.27. The firm noted that Coinbase's latest "System Update" indicates it is accelerating its transformation from a crypto trading platform into an "everything exchange" that bridges traditional finance and the on-chain economy.Analyst Mark Palmer stated that this product update covers tokenized stocks, stock and crypto options, pre-IPO perpetual contracts, prediction markets, AI-driven investment tools, agent payment infrastructure, and retail financial products, signaling the continuous expansion of its business boundaries.Key progress highlighted by Benchmark also includes: the U.S. CFTC's approval for it to operate as a regulated Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), global derivatives capabilities obtained through the acquisition of Deribit, and integrating crypto perpetuals and options into a compliant framework, thereby achieving cross-market liquidity consolidation.Furthermore, the company's strategic moves in the Base ecosystem, prediction markets, and AI agent payments are also seen as key signals of its evolution from "spot crypto trading" to a comprehensive on-chain financial infrastructure. (The Block)
: According to official sources, Base is about to launch the Beryl hard fork upgrade, introducing the B20 native token standard, which shortens the final confirmation period for single-proof withdrawals from 7 days to 5 days, and upgrades Reth V2, reducing disk usage by 50% and increasing throughput by 33%.Beryl will be activated on the Sepolia testnet at 2:00 AM UTC+8 on June 19, and on the mainnet at 2:00 AM UTC+8 on June 26.B20 is Base’s native token standard, an ERC-20 compatible token implemented via Rust precompile, designed specifically for stablecoins, RWAs, and long-tail token issuers. It includes a built-in compliance toolkit, featuring transfer strategies, freezing and seizing, role-based access control, memos, and supply caps.
Base lead Jesse Pollak introduced Base's latest development direction at the Coinbase System Update: Take Control conference held today. Base is committed to becoming a platform that supports global financial activities.Base announced support for tokenized stocks launched by Coinbase and introduced the B20 native token standard. The Base App will support Solana, Bitcoin, and multiple EVM networks, and will also launch a web version. Base introduced Base MCP, allowing AI Agents to perform on-chain activities such as transfers, transactions, swaps, and lending with user authorization.Base stated that it has processed over $19 trillion in stablecoin payment volume this year and supports more than 25 local currency stablecoins. Base has also launched private transactions and a new ledger architecture to meet corporate compliance and auditing requirements.
Mastercard is expanding its settlement network to support regulated stablecoins, planning to introduce stablecoin settlement, intraday settlement, as well as weekend and holiday settlement services to meet the demand for real-time fund movement.According to the introduction, the new settlement framework will operate in parallel with the existing fiat settlement system, providing financial institutions with more flexible liquidity management solutions. The first supported stablecoins include Circle-issued USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple-issued RLUSD, and SoFiUSD.The related services will cover blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, and XRPL. (CoinDesk)
According to The Block, Base—the Ethereum Layer 2 network operated by Coinbase—has officially activated the Azul upgrade on its mainnet. This marks Base’s first independent network upgrade following its separation from the Optimism Superchain. The Azul upgrade introduces a multi-proof system that combines TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) proofs with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, reducing the shortest possible withdrawal finalization time to just one day. Both proof types can independently confirm proposals; in case of conflict, permissionless ZK proofs override TEE proofs—further enhancing the network’s censorship resistance. Additionally, Azul integrates Base into a single execution client, <code>base-reth-node</code>, and introduces a new consensus client, <code>base-consensus</code>, built on OP Kona. Following the upgrade, the number of empty blocks has plummeted from approximately 200 per day to roughly 2 per day, and the network has achieved a sustained peak throughput of 5,000 transactions per second.
crypto market maker and investment firm Keyrock has released a new report indicating that as traditional bank card payment systems struggle to meet micro-payment needs, blockchain-based stablecoin payment rails are gradually becoming the default payment layer for AI agents.The report shows that between May 2025 and April 2026, AI agents have completed over 176 million transactions through on-chain infrastructure, settling more than $73 million.The so-called "Agentic Payments" refer to AI software that can autonomously purchase data, computing power, API access, or AI services without requiring human authorization for each individual transaction. For example, an AI trading agent can continuously and automatically buy market data, cloud computing resources, or AI analysis services. Keyrock believes this growth rate may even surpass the early explosive phase of stablecoins.Currently, Coinbase's x402 protocol has emerged as one of the leading crypto-native machine payment solutions, allowing AI agents to directly pay for on-chain data analysis, cloud services, and other resources using USDC, without the need for accounts or subscription systems.Data shows that approximately 76% of AI agent payment amounts fall below the common 30-cent fixed fee threshold of traditional bank cards, with most transactions ranging from just 1 to 10 cents. This makes traditional payment networks unsuitable for machine-to-machine micropayments. In contrast, on chains like Base and Tempo, the settlement cost for stablecoins is "less than one cent."However, regulation may still become a limiting factor for industry growth. The report points out that new regulatory frameworks, including Europe's MiCA, the US's GENIUS Act, and the EU's AI Act, have yet to directly cover critical issues such as autonomous transactions by AI agents, liability attribution, and identity authentication. (CoinDesk)
Wasabi Protocol released a security incident update, stating that the attacker exploited a Spring Boot Actuator configuration vulnerability in its AWS infrastructure to steal private keys controlling EVM smart contracts, and subsequently drained approximately $4.8 million in user funds and $900,000 from the protocol’s treasury—totaling roughly $5.7 million in losses. The attack chain originated from a public-facing analysis server whose Actuator heap dump was not properly password-protected, enabling the attacker to obtain credentials for another server and ultimately gain control of the smart contract private keys. This incident affected only EVM deployments—including certain treasuries on Ethereum, Base, Blast, and Berachain—while Solana deployments and the Prop AMM remained unaffected. No final user compensation plan has been announced yet; however, “ensuring all affected users are compensated” remains the team’s top priority. Updates on the investigation will be shared with the community via Discord.
Coinbase announced a “seven-figure” strategic investment in Centrifuge and selected it as the primary asset tokenization partner for its public blockchain, Base. Under the partnership, Centrifuge will serve as the core infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets on Base, enabling the onchain issuance and trading of real-world assets (RWAs), including ETFs, credit funds, and structured products. The two parties have previously collaborated—for instance, launching the first compliant onchain S&P 500 index fund on Base.
According to an official disclosure by Hyperbridge, the losses from the Token Gateway vulnerability incident on April 13 have been revised upward from an initial estimate of $237,000 to approximately $2.5 million. The increase stems primarily from losses incurred in incentive pools on Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum. The attacker extracted roughly 245 ETH from related contracts, then bypassed the MMR proof verification mechanism by forging cross-chain messages, minting 1 billion bridged DOT tokens and dumping them onto illiquid markets. Currently, some of the stolen funds have been traced on-chain to Binance. Hyperbridge is collaborating with Binance’s compliance team and law enforcement agencies to investigate the incident. Polkadot-native DOT and products such as Intent Gateway remain unaffected. The Token Gateway and bridged DOT contracts on the four affected EVM chains remain suspended. An external audit of the patched MMR verification logic is underway, and bridging functionality will be restored upon completion of the audit.
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.