| Key Points: – Coinbase launches Agentic Wallets giving AI agents guarded transactional control. – Controlled autonomy enables agent-initiated transactions within predefined, enforceable constraints. – Programmatic payments enabled while minimizing misuse and limiting error blast radius. |
On February 11, 2026, Coinbase announced the launch of Agentic Wallets, a wallet specifically designed for AI agents, as reported by Odaily. The product introduces controlled autonomy so agents can initiate transactions under clearly defined constraints.
The approach aims to let agents act within safe boundaries. In practice, that means enabling programmatic payments while embedding controls intended to reduce misuse and limit the blast radius of errors.
How it works: trusted execution environment (TEE), guardrails, x402 protocol
As reported by Cointelegraph, Agentic Wallets layer guardrails, spending caps, session limits, and restricted actions, on top of a payments flow powered by the x402 protocol, which has processed tens of millions of transactions. The report also highlights model‑context gatekeeping that restricts what an agent can do and cautions that risks persist, including prompt injection, phishing or scam tokens, slippage, and the possibility of interacting with sanctioned addresses without proper oversight.
A core architectural choice is to keep private keys in trusted execution environments (TEEs), isolating them from model runtime and ordinary disk access. This aims to prevent agents from ever handling raw keys directly and can limit exposure if instructions are compromised. “It’s not an SDK… you give it to an AI agent that it’s going to be really good at using,” said Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering, Coinbase Developer Platform, as reported by Decrypt.
At the time of this writing, Coinbase Global (COIN) last traded at $166.00 after hours on Feb. 13, up 1.02%, based on data from Yahoo Scout. This market figure is provided for contextual background only.
FAQ: Agentic Wallets and x402 for developers
What can agents pay for using the x402 protocol?
Programmatic payments for APIs, data, compute, and onchain services via standardized flows in x402. The agent initiates, the wallet enforces constraints.
How do spend caps and session limits work?
Agents operate within predefined per‑session budgets and time‑bound scopes. Transactions exceeding caps or expired sessions should fail or require renewed authorization.
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