Base activates Cobalt upgrade with controls for tokenized assets

Base activated Cobalt, its third major upgrade, on Wednesday. The upgrade adds conditional transactions and expands issuer controls under Base's B20 token standard. Issuers can apply several compliance checks to the same asset, including identity, accredited-investor and sanctions-list checks. Issuers can schedule adjustments for corporate actions such as stock splits. Those adjustments change the number of shares displayed in wallets and apps without minting or burning tokens or changing the underlying balance. Issuers can authorize administrators to move tokens from a holder's wallet without the holder's approval and attach a public note. Base said issuers decide whether to enable that feature and who can use it. Base cannot initiate such transfers. Cobalt also introduces Validity Transactions, which become eligible for inclusion only when specified onchain conditions are met. A trader could make a swap eligible only if an asset reaches a specified price before a set block deadline. Base would hold the transaction and check its conditions against the chain's state as each block is built. Base said transactions submitted through the system can remain private until included in a block. Base activated B20 on July 8 as a native standard for stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and other fungible tokens. B20 lets issuers create assets without building custom token contracts. On July 16, Base creator Jesse Pollak said the network had made a "wrong bet" by focusing on creator, content and messaging apps. Pollak said Base had fallen behind in areas including prediction markets and perpetual futures. Pollak said Base would focus more on financial applications, including trading and payments, as it sought to become a blockchain for global finance. On Aug. 25, Coinbase launched tokenized US stocks on Base using B20 tokens representing shares in Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet. Base said it plans over the coming months to reduce block times from two seconds to 200 milliseconds. Base also plans protocol-level support for sponsored transaction fees and bundled transactions, and adoption of some changes planned for Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade.