Coinbase acquires team to accelerate privacy efforts on Base

The past two years have seen onchain infrastructure take massive leaps forward. In 2023, L2s delivered the scalability needed to bring millions of users onchain. In 2024, smart wallets made self-custody simpler and more accessible than ever. In 2025, it’s time to ensure everyone has access to enhanced privacy.

Privacy isn't just a feature, it’s a right — and it’s critical for unlocking the full potential of crypto. Today, we’re taking a major step toward that future by acquiring the team behind Iron Fish. Led by Elena Nadolinski and Jason Spafford, this team brings a strong track record of helping builders by developing privacy-preserving tools and technology that are safe, accessible, and compliance-friendly. The team will stand up a new privacy pod within Base and work on accelerating our privacy strategy by developing privacy-preserving primitives across Base.

What this means for builders and users

With the Iron Fish team joining Base, we’re making a long-term investment in privacy as a core pillar of the onchain economy. Here’s what this means:

• For builders: Base’s scalability and privacy stack will help developers create the next generation of private, secure, and compliant onchain apps.

• For the industry: Coinbase is setting a new standard for privacy by integrating strong privacy guarantees into Base. In doing so, we’re pushing for an onchain future that’s secure, transparent, and usable.

• For everyone: Privacy tools will get easier to use, giving people more control while keeping transactions fast and low-cost. This means anyone can trade, transact, and engage onchain while protecting sensitive information.

As the team makes this transition, it’s important to clarify that we are solely acquiring the Iron Fish team—not the Iron Fish network, token, or its technology. The Iron Fish blockchain and its native token will remain independent and unaffiliated with Coinbase or Base, maintained by the Iron Fish Foundation. In parallel, Elena will continue to serve on the Foundation’s board, ensuring continuity for the network and its community.

Building the onchain future

This is one of the most sophisticated teams in the space, and by bringing them on, we’re injecting world-class protocol talent into Base and reinforcing our mission to bring the world onchain. Privacy isn’t optional — it’s a core building block. 

The next era of onchain infrastructure starts now. If you’re someone who cares about privacy and scalability, now’s the time to build.