Coinbase’s Base Acquires Iron Fish Team to Enhance Privacy on Layer 2 Network

Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 community Base has introduced buying the event workforce behind Iron Fish, a privacy-focused blockchain challenge. The newest transfer goals to spice up privateness options inside Base.

The acquisition focuses on integrating the experience of Iron Fish’s workforce and doesn’t contain the Iron Fish blockchain or its native token, each of which can proceed to function independently below the Iron Fish Basis.

Privateness-Targeted Enlargement

Key members of the Iron Fish workforce, together with CEO Elena Nadolinski and Jason Spafford, will be a part of Coinbase’s efforts to develop “privacy-preserving primitives” for Base. Their experience is anticipated to deal with the challenges of transaction transparency inherent in blockchain networks, as per the official announcement.

In the meantime, Nadolinski will proceed her function on the Iron Fish Basis’s board in a bid to make sure that the challenge’s governance construction stays intact.

Iron Fish, which is understood for leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to make sure transaction confidentiality, launched its mainnet in 2023 after over two years of improvement. It had secured $28 million in a 2021 funding spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz.

By integrating Iron Fish’s workforce, Coinbase goals to equip builders with instruments to construct safer and compliant decentralized purposes on Base. This initiative is according to Coinbase’s objective of advancing privateness options inside its ecosystem.

Iron Fish revealed that connectivity has witnessed vital development which is presently bridged to 27 clear chains with the assistance of ChainPort. To discourage dangerous actors, Iron Fish has carried out sanction screening on each transaction. It has additionally enabled personal wrapped USDC from Base and is making ready to launch a cellular app to supply customers with a non-public, Venmo-like expertise in cryptocurrency transactions.

“We imagine Base is uniquely positioned to onboard the world to crypto, and we’re extremely excited to construct out a privateness resolution that may obtain actual mass adoption, making personal transactions the usual slightly than the exception.”

Base Struggles Amid Market Uncertainty

The newest acquisition comes as Base faces difficulties amid excessive volatility within the broader market regardless of a formidable market entry over a 12 months in the past.

The community beforehand reached a excessive of $4 billion in TVL in December 2024 however has since dropped to $2.8 billion, because it continued to wrestle to take care of its earlier momentum.