Coinbase is closing the gap between AI assistance and autonomous execution through the introduction of Agentic Wallets, a purpose-built framework allowing AI agents to conduct financial transactions autonomously, including storing, sending, and trading crypto assets without human consent at every step of the process.
The Role of Coinbase’s Agentic Wallets
Agentic Wallets transform agents from passive advisors to active participants in today’s digital economy. The wallets come pre-loaded with plug-and-play “skills” (authenticate, fund, trade, earn), abstracting complex onchain logic. Each Agentic Wallet will use the x402 protocol (which has been tested on over 50 million transactions) to execute autonomously payments for access to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), computational resources, and premium data streams.
Agentic Wallet users will not need to concern themselves with the cost of network fees; users will be able to make gasless transactions with any token on Base. Development teams will be able to deploy their Agents in less than two minutes by using the npx awal command-line tool, designed for executing wallet operations.
Why This Represents a Paradigm Shift
The Agentic Wallets signify a continuation of the trend toward machine-based economies, with Coinbase emerging as the foundation of a fully autonomous commerce system in which machines execute purchase and sales transactions in place of humans. The decentralized finance (DeFi) element will allow agents (i.e., automated programs) to rebalance their portfolios at 3:00 AM without the assistance of a human, while content agents will have the ability to purchase premium datasets and gain immediate access to them.
Additionally, the Agentic Wallets include a non-custodial security model utilizing Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to provide private keys, while programmable spending limits will be placed on purchases made by agents to prevent runaway transactions.
