Coinbase now offers a new kind of crypto wallet designed for AI bots, called Agentic Wallets. These wallets allow AI agents to hold funds, send payments, and trade on-chain, while strict safety rules limit what the bots can do.
How Agentic Wallets Work for Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Agentic Wallets run on Coinbase’s developer platform as infrastructure for AI agents rather than for human users. Developers connect their bots to these wallets so agents can pay for services, access APIs, and move crypto without constant human clicks.
The wallets run on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2 network, and support gasless trading, so agents can continue operating even when they lack ETH for fees. Bots can handle USDC, swap tokens, and interact with smart contracts through Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol, which already processed more than 50 million transactions.
Built-In Guardrails and Security Design
Coinbase routes all sensitive keys through trusted execution environments, so AI bots never see or store private keys directly. The wallets use local session keys and limits to approve what an agent can spend, which helps contain damage if a prompt or model behaves in a risky way.
Guardrails include session spending caps, per‑transaction limits, and policy checks, such as Know Your Transaction screening, within Coinbase’s monitoring tools. These controls aim to reduce common threats like prompt injection, where someone might trick an AI into draining a wallet or sending funds to the wrong address.
Developers can create and fund an agent wallet in under two minutes using a command‑line interface and Coinbase’s AgentKit tools. Once set up, AI agents can trade, send payments, earn yield, and manage balances using a library of prebuilt financial functions.
These wallets enable AI bots to act as independent economic agents, running tasks such as machine‑to‑machine payments, automated DeFi strategies, and API-fee payments around the clock. Coinbase says traditional banking rails are not built for this kind of software activity, so it sees crypto wallets with clear guardrails as a better fit for autonomous AI systems.
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