Headline: Coinbase launches “Agentic Wallets” — a guarded payments layer for AI agents Coinbase this week unveiled Agentic Wallets, a new payments product designed to let autonomous AI agents hold and spend crypto while keeping key custody and compliance controls intact. Built on Base (Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2), the offering is framed not as another agent framework or SDK but as purpose-built wallet infrastructure that plugs into Coinbase’s existing custody and compliance stack. What it is - Agentic Wallets are a technical toolkit for developers and AI platforms, intended to be used as a “skill” inside agent environments rather than a consumer app. Coinbase says it’s “not an SDK, it’s not a library—it’s a purpose-built wallet to work with an agent as quickly as possible,” Erik Reppel, head of engineering for Coinbase Developer Platform, told Decrypt. - The wallets can handle USDC, perform token swaps, and pay for services using Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol. They’re designed to work with popular models and agent frameworks — from ChatGPT and Claude to emerging open-source projects like OpenClaw. Why Coinbase built it AI agents are evolving from conversational tools into autonomous actors that can book services, buy digital goods, and even hire humans — and that shift creates fresh security and compliance challenges. Today, many agent projects leave private keys on disk or embed them directly in agent logic, an approach that has already led to exploits and accidental losses. Coinbase positions Agentic Wallets as a safer alternative that separates signing keys from agent code and folds in custody controls. Security design and guardrails - Keys are isolated in Coinbase’s trusted execution environments (TEEs), not exposed to the agent. Authentication uses a local session key plus an email one-time passcode (OTP). - The agent interacts only with the wallet address and supported actions; the private key isn’t revealed to the agent. Coinbase calls the model “self-custodial” in that users can export keys off-platform, but agents never gain direct key access. - Reppel acknowledges no sandbox is perfect, but says the design is “several orders of magnitude safer than just having a private key on disk.” Context and risk The launch follows a wave of agent-first projects — examples include SpaceMolt (an MMO with AI factions), Moltbook (an agent social platform), and RentAHuman (bots that hire humans and pay stablecoins). Alongside innovation, researchers warn of new attack surfaces: prompt injection and intent hijacking, overly broad wallet allowances, and sparse monitoring that makes tracing and reversing actions difficult. Ellie Montgomery, a trend researcher at crypto portfolio manager Hexn, has detailed these risks in a recent report. Audience and limitations - For now Agentic Wallets are aimed at developers comfortable on the command line; Coinbase describes the current product as “a little technical.” It is focused on Base initially, though the company may extend to other chains later. - Coinbase frames crypto payment rails as better suited than legacy banking for autonomous software payments, arguing that dedicated stablecoin wallets can reduce friction and risk versus routing agent payments through credit cards. What this means Agentic Wallets represent Coinbase’s bet that as AI agents begin to transact, payments infrastructure must evolve to balance autonomy, security, and regulatory controls. The product could help accelerate agent-driven commerce while addressing some of the most obvious technical risks — but it won’t eliminate governance and monitoring challenges that researchers say require broader tooling and oversight. Bottom line: Coinbase is offering a guarded bridge between autonomous AI agents and real-world payments. It’s a developer-focused starting point on Base that prioritizes custody separation and sandboxing — but the space will still need more layers of monitoring, policy, and risk controls as agent use cases scale. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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