Coinbase is rebranding its Base App back to Coinbase Wallet, walking back a pivot made roughly 14 months ago and repositioning the self-custody product as a multichain trading hub rather than a social-first platform.
Why the name is changing back
Ryan Kass, head of product for Coinbase Wallet, said the restored name signals a deliberate strategic shift. ‘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,’ Kass said.
Coinbase originally rebranded the wallet as Base App in July 2025, pitching it as an ‘everything app’ that combined crypto trading, social networking, messaging, AI tools, and creator monetisation. The company is now reversing that direction.
Test kitchen for new assets and networks
Kass described the revived Coinbase Wallet as the company’s ‘test kitchen,’ a space where assets and experiences not yet available on Coinbase’s main retail exchange can be introduced first. ‘On Coinbase Wallet, you can usually find things very quickly,’ he said. ‘We offer the Robinhood chain, we offer Hyperliquid perps, and a lot of the time, things that land on Coinbase Wallet will find their way to Coinbase retail.’
Features already available under the repositioned wallet include perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, support for Solana and other networks, and tokenised stocks across multiple chains. ‘We don’t want to put limits on what people trade, and we see that our users are asking to trade all these sorts of assets,’ Kass added.
Robinhood Chain competition acknowledged
Kass addressed the growing competition from Robinhood Chain directly, framing it as a cycle rather than a threat. ‘Right now, Robinhood Chain is very hot, but Base Chain is really fast and offers super cheap fees,’ he said. ‘We believe that this stuff is cyclical, and when the rotation is back to Base Chain, Coinbase Wallet will be ready.’
Despite the rivalry between Coinbase and Robinhood for customers, Kass argued that neither platform can afford to exclude the other’s ecosystem, and that offering a wide range of assets lets users decide where to trade.
Social features deprioritised after failed bet
The strategic reset follows a reassessment of the Base App’s social ambitions. In July 2026, Base creator Jesse Pollak stepped back from leading the app to focus on the Base blockchain after acknowledging that his push into social features and creator coins had not attracted the adoption he expected.
Social activity could still appear inside the product, Kass indicated, but the wallet will follow user demand rather than push a particular social model.
Commitment to Base blockchain unchanged
Despite dropping the Base App name, Coinbase said its commitment to the Base network remains intact. The wallet will continue to distribute assets, communities, and features built on Base. ‘So Coinbase Wallet is the name getting back to our roots, and represents that it’s your place to trade anything anywhere very quickly,’ Kass said.
