Ethereum, Base give up on common wallet standard after months of talks

Ethereum and Coinbase-backed Base abandoned an effort to build a common standard for the next generation of crypto wallets, with developers on both sides deciding the compromise cost each network too much.

The goal was to make crypto wallets behave more like modern apps. Users could log in with passkeys, recover accounts in different ways, allow an app to pay transaction fees and bundle several blockchain actions into a single transaction. Holding ETH simply to pay a network fee would become optional.

The disagreement centered on differences in the blockchains’ priorities, and developers spent months trying to merge the two designs. The inability to reach an agreement means developers designing wallets that work across both networks may need to support two different ways of constructing and approving the same transaction.

“Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base, and while both sides acknowledged the benefits of ecosystem interoperability, it was ultimately secondary to the need for each chain to achieve their core goals,” Derek Chiang, an Ethlabs developer involved in the work, posted on X.

According to Chiang the cooperation efforts broke down last week.