Written by: Little Cake

On September 10, Coinbase reverted the Base App back to Coinbase Wallet. This name was only changed a year ago, with the initial vision to turn it into an "everything app," integrating social features, mini apps, messaging, payments, and trading all in one shell.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong admitted in March this year that the social experiment "did not really work." Base founder Jesse Pollak handed over product leadership to Jordan "Cobie" Fish in July, acknowledging that some social and creator features did not meet expectations.

With the return to the old name, the product positioning underwent a fundamental shift.

Product List of the New Coinbase Wallet

What can the new Coinbase Wallet do?

It supports over 10 networks, including Base, Robinhood Chain (newly added), Monad (newly added), Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Avalanche. It integrates Hyperliquid's perpetual contracts. It supports prediction markets and tokenized stocks, allowing users to track the operations of on-chain traders.

The product lead of Coinbase Wallet, Ryan Kass, defines the wallet as a "test kitchen" outside centralized exchanges, where assets and products not yet on Coinbase's main site are piloted.

The wallet remains self-custodial, granting users ownership of their private keys. On-chain assets can be traded as soon as they are minted, while new asset categories (such as prediction markets and tokenized stocks) will only appear in the app after passing product and compliance reviews. Coinbase monetizes through trading and product fees but refuses to disclose specific rates and user growth data.

The product marketing slogan is "No KYC, no waiting, no borders." Some features remain subject to geographical restrictions.

The True Lesson from the Failed Social Experiment

Coinbase renamed the wallet to Base App in July 2025, with a clear bet: users spend too little time in cryptocurrency apps and need social features, content, and mini-programs to improve daily active users and retention. This logic references WeChat and TikTok, embedding transactions within social graphs to make socializing a vehicle for trading.

A year of experimentation proved one thing: the core reason users open financial apps remains assets and trading.

This conclusion sounds mundane, but its implications are crucial for the entire industry. It means that the competitive dimension for cryptocurrency wallets lies in who can enable users to "reach more" - more assets, more chains, more types of transactions.

Coinbase Wallet is currently taking the extreme route of "reaching more": combining spot trading, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, tokenized stocks, and long-tail assets within one app, spanning over 10 chains.

Six Companies are Building the Same Thing

Placing Coinbase Wallet's pivot within a larger context reveals a clear industry trend.

On the same day, Bybit announced its EU super app plan: MiCA + EMI + MiFID three licenses, providing IBAN accounts, real stocks, cryptocurrency derivatives, contracts for difference, and commodities. CEO Ben Zhou's goal is "Revolut plus Bybit."

Robinhood started as a brokerage and entered crypto-native trading via Robinhood Chain, achieving $47 billion in DEX trading volume in two months, supporting tokenized stocks from around 190 companies.

Kraken has partnered with Payward for tokenized stock collaborations with Nasdaq, LSE, and Deutsche Börse, accumulating over $25 billion in xStocks trading volume. Nasdaq just set a $21 billion valuation for Payward with a $100 million investment.

MetaMask is expanding from an Ethereum wallet to a multi-chain DEX aggregator, with Solana and Bitcoin support already on the roadmap.

OKX secured investment from ICE (the parent company of NYSE) to access the NYSE's tokenized stock market, covering 120 million accounts.

Six companies, starting from completely different viewpoints (centralized exchanges, brokerages, crypto wallets, traditional exchange partners) are converging towards the same end form. This form can be summarized in one sentence:

One account that provides spot trading, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, tokenized stocks, stablecoin payments, and long-tail on-chain assets.

The Unique Positioning of Coinbase Wallet

In this convergence, Coinbase Wallet has chosen an interesting positioning: Coinbase's main site covers compliance, custody, and institutional funds. The wallet covers self-custody, no KYC, on-chain native assets, and experimental products. The two products share the Coinbase brand but serve different user intents, like the same company operating two complementary distribution channels.

The integration of Hyperliquid is a signal. Coinbase itself operates a derivatives business (even more so after acquiring Deribit), but it chose to connect an external on-chain perpetual contract protocol in the Wallet, indicating that the product logic of the Wallet is "aggregating the best" rather than "building everything." This differentiates it from the centralized exchange's approach of "internalizing all liquidity."

Coinbase spent a year and the opportunity cost of a product team learning an old rule of the crypto industry: users come to make money, not to socialize.

The question is, when Bybit, Robinhood, Kraken, and OKX are all building essentially the same thing, where does Coinbase Wallet's differentiation truly lie?