Coinbase introduces wallets designed for autonomous AI agents
Coinbase has unveiled Agentic Wallets, a wallet infrastructure designed specifically for autonomous AI agents. The initiative allows software agents to hold digital assets and execute transactions without requiring a human to click through every operation, marking a shift in how machine-driven applications can interact with blockchain networks.Until now, AI systems could generate recommendations to buy or sell, but direct execution typically depended on a person authorizing payments, trades, or transfers. Agentic Wallets are positioned as a way to move from advisory automation to transactional autonomy, while keeping controls around how agents access funds.
How Agentic Wallets work
With Agentic Wallets, an AI agent receives a dedicated wallet that can store value, pay for API requests, trade tokens, and interact with DeFi protocols within predefined limits. The system is built around the x402 protocol, which Coinbase previously introduced as a framework for programmable payments tied to web and API usage.The concept is aimed at enabling machine-to-machine commerce, where an agent can pay for data, compute, or execution services as part of an automated workflow. Coinbase’s pitch is that this reduces friction for AI applications that need to act in real time, while still operating under configurable restrictions.
Limits, permissions and key custody
Coinbase has emphasized that the product is not designed as an unrestricted “wallet for bots.” The infrastructure supports configurable session limits and transaction caps, allowing developers or operators to constrain what an agent can do during a given period and how much value it can move per action.Private keys are held within Coinbase’s environment and are not handed to the agent itself, according to the description of the system. That design choice is intended to reduce the risk of key exposure while still enabling autonomous execution within guardrails defined by the wallet’s policy settings.
Lightning Labs releases a parallel toolkit
Coinbase’s announcement landed alongside a separate release from Lightning Labs, which open-sourced Lightning Agent Tools built on the L402 protocol. The Lightning-based approach is framed differently, emphasizing payment proofs over accounts, and avoiding API keys and identity layers by relying on cryptographic confirmation via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.The two approaches highlight different trade-offs: an exchange-hosted environment with built-in controls and custody on one side, and a more permissionless, payment-first model on the other. Both efforts target the same emerging use case of automated agents that can pay, transact, and settle without manual intervention.
The launch comes as activity around agent-driven trading continues to grow, with reports pointing to a surge of newly registered autonomous agents on Ethereum. Coinbase’s move signals that major platforms are preparing for a market where software entities participate directly in crypto economies under technical constraints and policy-defined spending limits.
Editorial Team - CoinBotLab
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