Coinbase Ventures – Advancing crypto and web3

The Coinbase Ventures blog

What we’re watching around the cryptoeconomy.

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May 16, 2025

The Rise of Onchain AI: Agents, Apps, and Commerce

The convergence of Crypto and AI is giving rise to a burgeoning Onchain AI economy, an ecosystem of blockchain apps and services run by autonomous AI agents. And while Decentralized AI projects have seen the lionshare of funding and growth over the last 18 months, we believe Onchain AI is gaining momentum and signaling the next phase of rapid innovation at this intersection. The importance of Onchain AI lies in expanding crypto to potentially billions of AI-powered participants. Every autonomous AI agent is like a new “user” of blockchains that can operate 24/7 and make sophisticated decisions, driving a significant increase in onchain activity and growth. Through investing in Onchain AI, Coinbase Ventures is supporting the builders of this future agent-based economy, ultimately paving the way to a new “Agentic Web”.

March 13, 2025

The Future of Investing is Open and Onchain

The future of startup investing is open and onchain. By becoming a group lead on Echo, the Base Ecosystem Group (led by Coinbase Ventures) will unlock broader and more dynamic capital for builders on Base.

October 24, 2024

Demystifying the Crypto x AI Stack

The future of AI can be built on blockchain technology, as crypto can help increase accessibility, transparency, and use cases within the emerging tech. The convergence of crypto’s efficiency, borderless nature, and programmability with AI has the potential to transform how humans and machines interact with the digital economy, including by enabling users to have sovereignty over their personal data. This includes the rise of the “Agentic Web,” where AI agents operating on crypto infrastructure can drive economic activity and growth.

July 16, 2024

ELI5 – L3s

While L2s’ lower gas fees / increased throughput have enabled them to become the hub of onchain activity & account for a sizable portion of the ETH-based economy, they may be constrained by pressure to maintain decentralization & alignment with ETH L1. Builders that want to [1] experiment and customize their apps, and [2] align with an L2 for distribution, are now opting to build L3s – which are application-chains that settle to an underlying L2. This document is focused on building a shared understanding of L3s.

May 14, 2024

Understanding the EigenLayer AVS Landscape

EigenLayer* is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in crypto-economic security that has emerged as a leading narrative within the Ethereum community. Restaking via EigenLayer enables developers to leverage Ethereum's existing economic security infrastructure (i.e., validator set and staked ETH) to bootstrap new Actively Validated Services (AVS). Compared to how traditional cloud platforms and SaaS solutions were transformative to web2 development, we believe the emergence of EigenLayer and its burgeoning ecosystem of AVSs unlocks a "verifiable cloud" paradigm for web3. As restaking and shared security models evolve, their impact on blockchain ecosystems will become increasingly evident, driven by growing demand from stakers and developers seeking to unlock new opportunities onchain.

March 5, 2024

State of Wallets - Part 2: Smart Accounts

"Smart Accounts" (or “Smart Wallets”) – which we define as smart contract wallets (SCW) with “Account Abstraction” features – have become a top-of-mind conversation among crypto developers. Account Abstraction (“AA”) launched in the EVM ecosystem in Q1-2023 and is beginning to see an uptick in adoption. This document explains the value proposition, adoption inflection, and implications for the broader ecosystem.

February 26, 2024

State of Wallets - Part 1: Wallet Technologies

The two most important technologies created in crypto/web3 are the concept of blockspace and cryptographic keys/wallets. Wallet technologies have now expanded beyond self-custodial wallets, and we believe within the next 5 years wallets will change dramatically – marking crypto’s “iPhone” moment. In this part, we will cover the various wallet technologies. In the future parts, we will cover related trends like how data and identifiers will be attached to wallets.

January 29, 2024

State of Bridging

Bridges have emerged as core infrastructure for protocols, service providers, and users in accessing crypto use-cases. This report is meant to capture the current state of the bridging landscape, the future trends in bridging, and the implications for the broader crypto ecosystem.