Smart wallet adoption and the creator economy on Base

The 10 Million Account Milestone

Coinbase reached a 10 million consumer wallet milestone. This growth follows a period where the company grew from 13,000 wallets in 2013. Since its founding in June 2012, Coinbase has seen over 25,000 merchants use its platform. It also supports over 4,000 Bitcoin applications. These new smart wallets use ERC-4337 and EIP-7702. The Pectra upgrade introduced EIP-7702 on May 7, 2025. This protocol allows an existing Externally Owned Account to point to a smart contract implementation for a specific duration. Users keep their same address and funds while they gain smart features. This technology removes the difficulty of new account creation. Developers use paymasters to sponsor transactions. This allows a user to pay gas fees in USDC on Base instead of needing native ETH. The combination of ERC-4337 and EIP-7702 allows existing users to access passkey sign-ins and gas sponsorship without the immediate requirement to move their entire asset holdings to a brand new smart contract address. Users use passkeys like Face ID, a fingerprint, or a Yubikey to sign transactions. This replaces the need for a 12-word seed phrase. You probably know that losing a seed phrase causes most people to lose their funds. Smart wallets use social recovery with guardians or friends. This provides a way to recover access. The smart wallet supports 8 networks including Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, and Zora. Users use their Coinbase balances onchain to avoid "insufficient balance" errors. Industry estimates cite 200 million smart wallets across the ecosystem in 2026. Developers can integrate or update SDKs to offer users a superior experience with at most a few lines of code. Developers can also qualify for up to $15,000 in gas credits through the Base Gasless Campaign. Participating in the Base Buildathon gives developers a chance to win ETH across 8 tracks, with a 40 ETH bonus pool for smart wallet integration. However, flawed smart contract code or compromised guardians still pose risks to user funds.

Onchain Summer minting figures

Onchain Summer 2026 generated 700,000 mints from 268,000 distinct wallets between August 9 and August 31. Coca-Cola accounts for 80,000 of those mints. Iskra and FWB both reached 71,000 mints. Zora recorded 70,000 mints. Anotherblock saw 55,000 mints. Base itself recorded 154,000 mints. Deekay Motion reached 45,000 mints. Zorb saw 44,000 mints. Kleerup saw 31,000 mints. Jesse Pollak hosted Onchain Summer Stories livestreams which reached over 200,000 views. These sessions showed various creators building on Base. The event involved 50 pioneering companies and various artists. Artists like Slimesunday use NFTs to show the permanence of digital creativity. The event lasted 23 days. Will these creators continue to build on Layer 2 networks as gas fees fluctuate?

L2 infrastructure and consumer payments

Visa enables stablecoin settlement across Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Stellar. In 2025, total net spending on six Visa-partnered crypto card programs rose from $14.6 million in January to $91.3 million by December. This 525% increase shows consumer comfort with paying directly from crypto wallets. EtherFi held the highest volume with $55.4 million in transactions. Cypher followed with $20.5 million. Other issuers include GnosisPay, Avici Money, Exa App, and Moonwell. Polygon researcher Alex Obchakevich notes that crypto card spending reflects regular financial behavior. This growth shows crypto cards move beyond experimental use. Visa launched a stablecoin advisory team in December 2025 to help fintech companies design stablecoin products. Mastercard acquired the stablecoin startup BVNK for $1.8 billion in March 2026. Base acts as a bridge for users moving from centralized exchanges to decentralized applications. It uses the Optimism tech stack. Arbitrum remains the largest Layer 2 by total value locked with over $18 billion. Optimism maintains over $7 billion in total value locked. The total crypto market capitalization reached US$2.99T in October 2026. Spot BTC ETFs saw US$3.49B in inflows during the month. These flows turned 2026 net flows positive on September 23. AI spending is entering a new deployment cycle. Big Tech capital expenditure is projected between $550 billion and $600 billion. In March 2026, Pre-IPO perpetuals volume on Binance doubled to $1.3 billion as conversations around AI safety gained pace. This activity included Anthropic, which approached a 2026 IPO date. OPENAIUSDT traded $755 million.

Smart wallet selection and specs

I categorize smart wallets by their specific use cases and technical capabilities. Coinbase Smart Wallet suits new users because it uses passkeys and skips seed phrase setup. It supports most leading onchain apps and allows users to spend directly from Coinbase accounts. Safe remains the industry standard for multisig security. It requires multiple verified approvals before any funds move. This makes it suitable for DAOs or companies. Argent provides social recovery for users who want a path beyond traditional backup words. Argent also provides Starknet integration. Biconomy offers an SDK for apps that want to embed white-label wallets. Sequence works well for game studios that need to sponsor in-game tokens. Privy targets B2B applications by adding wallets to existing authentication. Magic.link serves developers who want Web2-style authentication. Rainbow stands out for its clean interface. Ambire works for DeFi users who want smart tools for active workflows. Trust Wallet reaches many mobile users through its smart accounts.

I suggest users evaluate the specific security models of these wallets before committing large assets.