Jesse Pollak Takes Lead Charge of Coinbase Wallet Team

Jesse Pollak, the developer of the Layer 2 blockchain Base, has been appointed to lead the Coinbase Wallet team. He will join Coinbase’s executive team and use his experience to improve the wallet’s operations. 

Pollak will manage the strategic direction of the Coinbase Wallet in his new role. His main objective is to make it easier for users worldwide to access and connect with onchain products. He shared his excitement about bringing Base and Coinbase Wallet closer together via a post on X platform. The developer added that both platforms have a common aim, which is to simplify how people use the onchain economy.

hey everyone – some news: in addition to leading the @base team, i’ll be stepping up to lead @coinbasewallet and joining the @coinbase exec team.

i’m really excited to take on this new mandate and to accelerate our mission of bringing a billion people and a million builders…

— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) September 30, 2024

Pollak affirmed in the same post that Base would keep its core values of inclusivity, decentralization and open-source development. He also plans to incorporate these values into the Coinbase Wallet. This shows a proactive approach to uniting both platforms under his leadership.

Coinbase launched its self-custody wallet for mobile in 2017 and added a desktop version in 2021 as a Chrome browser extension. The wallet has become more popular, moving up from 99th to 79th in Apple’s App Store for free finance apps from September to October.

Pollak’s work has significantly impacted Base, which recently reported $2.2 billion in total value locked (TVL). The platform introduced a wrapped version of Bitcoin in mid-August, which allows Bitcoin to work with Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) applications through Coinbase’s layer-2 solution.

This move aims to increase Bitcoin’s use in the DeFi sector, making it easier for users to interact with DeFi protocols and applications and enhancing Bitcoin’s utility in the onchain economy.

Coinbase has completed its first cryptocurrency transaction between two artificial intelligence agents, as announced by CEO Brian Armstrong on X. In this transaction, one AI agent used crypto tokens to buy “AI tokens” from another. 

These AI tokens, which are just strings of data, help improve machine learning algorithms. This is a big step in combining AI with blockchain technology.