Ethereum and Coinbase-backed Base have ended negotiations aimed at producing a shared standard for next-generation cryptocurrency wallets, concluding that a compromise would require each network to sacrifice core priorities.
Ethereum is advancing EIP-8141, known as Frame Transactions, while Base has moved ahead with its own competing proposal, EIP-8130. Both are drafts that alter the rules governing who can approve a transaction, who pays for it, and what occurs after approval. The divergence means cross-network wallets and applications will now need to support two different systems for constructing and signing transactions.
Ethereum’s approach emphasizes privacy, censorship resistance, security, and protection against future quantum computing threats. The proposed standard also aims to make it easier for accounts to migrate away from the cryptography currently used by most Ethereum wallets if quantum computers eventually render it insecure. By contrast, Base’s proposal prioritizes flexibility for high-volume applications and systems subject to compliance requirements, allowing more freedom to optimize transactions across different use cases.
The cooperation efforts broke down last week after months of development work, according to Derek Chiang, an Ethlabs developer involved in the negotiations, who posted on X that “Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base,” adding that ecosystem interoperability was ultimately secondary to each chain achieving its core goals.
Ethereum is targeting EIP-8141 for Hegotá, its planned upgrade following the Glamsterdam upgrade scheduled for later this year. The Ethereum Foundation listed EIP-8141 among execution-layer features that must ship with Hegotá, giving the proposal priority but not a guarantee; the standard is still under development and is not yet active on Ethereum.
Base is pushing EIP-8130 forward independently. The design is available for testing on the Vibenet development network and is planned for the Cobalt upgrade, with testnet and mainnet deployments scheduled for September.
Under the original goal, users would have been able to log in with passkeys, recover accounts through multiple methods, allow applications to pay transaction fees, and bundle several blockchain actions into a single transaction—eliminating the requirement to hold ETH solely to pay network fees.
