The Base team and the Utopia Labs team will work together in the future.
Coinbase is working hard to improve the range of services it offers. The cryptocurrency exchange finished acquiring Utopia Labs, a blockchain fintech company based in San Francisco, this week. Although the acquisition’s financial details have not been made public, the goal is to improve Coinbase’s on-chain payment systems and services. In March, Coinbase was valued at about $59.49 billion (approximately Rs. 5,02,159 crore), but by September, it had fallen to $36.26 billion (approximately Rs. 3,06,073 crore).
According to an official blog post from Coinbase, the Utopia Labs team will collaborate with the Base team going forward. Base is Coinbase’s own layer-2 scaling network. It is anticipated that the exchange will improve blockchain-based recordkeeping for transactions, tokenisation, and smart contracts.
“Base helps developers create onchain apps, which draw users to the network; Wallet onboards those users, which encourages more developers to create onchain apps.” Jesse Pollak, the man behind the layer-2 blockchain base, stated, “I am thrilled to announce that the Utopia Labs team is joining Base to help accelerate our on-chain payments roadmap within Coinbase Wallet.”
In the coming months, Coinbase will attempt to bring low-cost, fast, and global payments to its users. It will also prioritise strengthening its stablecoin services, which are cryptocurrencies backed by reserve assets like gold or fiat money.
Pollak claims that “Stablecoins amounted to $8.5 trillion (approximately Rs. 7,17,48,727 crore) in transaction volume across 1.1 billion transactions in Q2 2024, and it will be crucial to continue improving the user experience as stablecoin payments continue to grow.”
Founded in 2021, Utopia Labs claims to have developed several solutions to enable low-cost transactions for Web3 projects. X, which had more than 16,000 followers, formally declared that Coinbase had purchased it.
Since 2021, we’ve launched a suite of products designed to make onchain payments more accessible and efficient for both individuals and businesses.
— Utopia Labs (@utopialabs_) November 13, 2024
Today, we're thrilled to announce that our team is joining @coinbase to accelerate this vision – a world where we're able to bring… pic.twitter.com/sMyUAyFMZy
This acquisition comes after Coinbase recently demonstrated what it claimed was the first AI-to-AI cryptocurrency transaction in history. CEO Brian Armstrong demonstrated the possibility of integrating AI into Web3 in September by showing an AI entity buying tokens from another AI entity.
In July, OpenAI’s Chris Lehane joined Coinbase’s board of directors as one of three new appointees.
The exchange recently unveiled its Pre-launch Market initiative, which aims to act as a launchpad for future cryptocurrency projects. In an effort to get precise rules on acceptable business practices and areas that need caution, Coinbase has also been aggressively opposing the US SEC.