Coinbase Renames Base App Back to Coinbase Wallet

Coinbase is renaming its Base App back to Coinbase Wallet and shifting focus from social networking to multichain trading. Coinbase Wallet's head of product, Ryan Kass, announced the move in an interview with Decrypt.

What's changing in the app

Coinbase plans to restore the Base App's original name, Coinbase Wallet. The company will keep supporting the Base network, but it's dropping the approach that leaned on a built-in social network inside the app. The main focus now shifts to trading assets across multiple blockchain networks at once.

The app will once again serve as a kind of testing lab, or what Coinbase calls its "test kitchen." That's where the company plans to launch new assets and trading features before they reach the main Coinbase exchange. According to Kass, this approach lets the company gauge demand for new asset types faster without risking its core product.

The company also stresses that the new focus doesn't mean dropping social features entirely. Things like messaging or public profiles will stay available, just not as the main reason to open the app, more as an extra option alongside trading.

Large exchanges have often handled this kind of role through separate experimental labs or partner projects. Coinbase instead chose to keep that function inside a single app already used by millions of people, rather than building a separate product from scratch.

Why the rebrand happened

Base App launched in Los Angeles in July 2025 as an attempt to combine trading, social networking, messaging, AI tools and creator monetization in one app. About 14 months have passed since then, and the social feature never became the main reason users opened the app.

According to Kass, the Coinbase Wallet name better reflects the company's new strategy, which Coinbase informally calls its "everything exchange": access to any asset regardless of network or token brand. Returning to the old name, he said, symbolizes exactly that idea.

Other major players in the market have followed a similar path before, when turning a wallet into a full social platform didn't deliver the expected results, leading the company back to a simpler, more familiar product.

New features for traders

The updated Coinbase Wallet now supports perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, expanded support for the Solana network, and tokenized stocks across several blockchains at once. Some of these features were previously only available through separate specialized apps.

For developers, this is also a signal: the platform worth building for first is no longer a standalone social network inside a wallet, but a multichain infrastructure with a wide range of assets and networks.

• Perpetual futures on Hyperliquid.
• Expanded support for the Solana network.
• Tokenized stocks across multiple blockchain networks.

According to Kass, the app will keep supporting the Base network despite the shift in general product focus. The company says successful assets and features from Coinbase Wallet will gradually make their way to the main Coinbase exchange. That cycle, Kass said, has already played out multiple times before, when demand for a new asset in the wallet signaled it was ready to be added to the exchange.

For an average user, this means simpler access to assets that recently required a separate wallet or a sign-up on another platform. Everything now happens inside one app, with one account and one transaction history.

Competing with Robinhood

Coinbase and Robinhood compete for the same users, but according to Kass, neither company can afford to fully ignore the other's products. Both platforms are building their own blockchain networks and trying to pull developers and traders to their side.

"The rebrand back to Coinbase Wallet is a representation that you can access any asset, regardless of what chain it's on, regardless of the brand of asset on crypto."

- Ryan Kass, Head of Product at Coinbase Wallet, in an interview with Decrypt

Kass added that Robinhood Chain is drawing a lot of attention from the market right now, while Base Chain offers faster performance and lower transaction fees. That's why Coinbase Wallet will keep supporting both networks, leaving the final choice up to the user.

For the broader market, this shift means competition between major exchanges is moving away from the question of which platform is better, toward which platform offers the widest choice of networks and assets in one place.

An exact date for the full rename hasn't been announced, but Kass says the changes will roll out gradually rather than in one sharp release. That will let development teams test the new navigation and user feedback before the full switch.