Coinbase and Solana Make Consecutive Moves, Agent Economy Set to Become the Next Big Narrative

marsbitPublished on 2026-02-13Last updated on 2026-02-13

Abstract

On February 11, 2026, Coinbase announced the launch of Agentic Wallets, a wallet specifically designed for AI agents to independently hold and manage funds. Unlike the earlier AgentKit, which required developers to embed wallet functionality, Agentic Wallets offer a plug-and-play solution, allowing users to equip any AI agent with a wallet in under two minutes. These wallets enable agents to perform tasks like authentication, sending/receiving funds, payments, trading, and yield farming, all with programmable spending limits and security features to prevent fund depletion. Transactions occur on the Base chain with no gas fees for agents. Coinbase's goal is to foster an agent economy on Base, transforming AI agents from "brains without hands" into autonomous entities capable of executing financial actions. Potential applications include autonomous DeFi management, agent-driven commerce, content tokenization, and multi-chain operations. Shortly after Coinbase's announcement, Solana responded with a similar solution, lobster.cash, signaling the start of a new competitive landscape in on-chain agent economies. This development is poised to become a major narrative in the crypto space.

February 11, 2026, Coinbase announced the launch of Agentic Wallets, a wallet specifically designed for AI Agents.

What are Agentic Wallets?

Agentic Wallets aim to empower AI Agents with a fundamental capability required for their next evolution—independently holding and managing funds.

As early as November 2024, Coinbase had launched AgentKit, but there is an essential difference between AgentKit and Agentic Wallets. AgentKit was used to "embed" a wallet into an agent, requiring developers to perform custom integration. In contrast, Agentic Wallets are about "quickly equipping any agent with a wallet," making them more plug-and-play.

Simply put, the previous AgentKit was a toolkit provided to AI Agent developers, enabling the agents they created to have built-in wallet functionality. But now, in an era where everyone can quickly launch their own AI Agent, anyone can install a wallet for their agent by executing a few simple commands, just like adding a Skill to their agent. According to Coinbase, "it takes less than 2 minutes to set up."

Complex on-chain operations are abstracted by Coinbase into Skills that agents can install and execute with simple commands. Agentic Wallets enable agents to perform identity verification, send/receive funds, make payments, trade, earn yields (Yield Farming or LP), and more.

To prevent the excessive autonomy of AI Agents from rapidly depleting funds due to certain reasons, Agentic Wallets also provide programmable spending limits, including the maximum amount an agent can spend per session, the maximum limit per transaction, private key isolation protection, and screening to block high-risk transactions.

The supported assets are based on the Base chain. To ensure that agents active on Base are not interrupted due to insufficient gas fees, actions performed by agents on Base do not require gas fees.

Why is Coinbase doing this?

Coinbase's ambition is clear—to make the Agent economy happen on Base.

The longstanding dilemma for AI Agents has been that they can help analyze markets, provide investment decision suggestions, discover arbitrage opportunities, and more, but they lack identity, accounts, and wallets. Therefore, they can only offer suggestions to humans and cannot execute operations autonomously, like "a brain without hands."

Once agents can hold and manage funds, entirely new financial applications and even ecosystems will emerge. Coinbase has outlined several aspects of the new applications that may emerge on-chain:

- Autonomous DeFi for Agents: Enabling agents to monitor cross-protocol liquidity mining situations, autonomously manage liquidity positions around the clock, and conduct autonomous trading on Base, all based on pre-set permissions and risk control strategies by humans. Humans can sleep soundly, leaving the tedious tasks to agents.

- Agent Commerce: Agents use the x402 protocol to autonomously purchase computing resources, access advanced data streams, and pay related fees, creating a truly self-sustaining agent economy.

- Agent Business: Enabling agents to participate in the creator economy, make payments to other agents or users, and even tokenize the content they generate.

- Multi-chain Agent Operations: Although an agent's wallet is on Base, they can autonomously manage positions across multiple chains and execute strategies.

By lowering the barrier for ordinary users to install wallets for their agents, combined with the steadily developing payment protocol x402 and the added benefit of no gas fees for agents, Coinbase's ambitious layout is初步 taking shape. Although it's hard to predict what stunning innovations the Agent economy will bring in the future, for degens, this is undoubtedly the next big narrative that needs attention starting now.

Shortly after Coinbase announced the launch of Agentic Wallets, Solana immediately followed up by retweeting lobster.cash, an AI Agent autonomous payment solution on the Solana chain launched by Crossmint. Its core function is largely similar to Agentic Wallets—enabling agents to have autonomous wallets and independently manage and operate assets.

The new war surrounding the on-chain economy of Agents has already begun.

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Related Questions

QWhat is the main purpose of Coinbase's newly announced Agentic Wallets?

AAgentic Wallets are designed to provide AI Agents with the ability to independently hold and manage funds, enabling them to perform financial operations such as sending/receiving funds, trading, and yield farming without human intervention.

QHow does Agentic Wallets differ from Coinbase's earlier product, AgentKit?

AAgentKit required developers to embed wallet functionality into AI Agents through custom integration, while Agentic Wallets offer a plug-and-play solution that allows users to quickly equip any AI Agent with a wallet in minutes.

QWhat security features does Agentic Wallets provide to prevent excessive spending by AI Agents?

AIt includes programmable spending limits, such as maximum expenditure per session, per transaction caps, private key isolation, and screening to block high-risk transactions.

QWhy is Coinbase promoting Agentic Wallets on the Base chain?

ACoinbase aims to make the Base chain the hub for the Agent economy by offering features like gas-free transactions for Agents on Base, thereby encouraging the development of new financial applications and ecosystems.

QHow did Solana respond to Coinbase's announcement of Agentic Wallets?

ASolana quickly followed up by promoting lobster.cash, an AI Agent autonomous payment solution on Solana developed by Crossmint, which serves a similar purpose of enabling Agents to manage and operate assets independently.

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