Ethereum and Coinbase-backed Base have ended months of negotiations aimed at creating a unified standard for next-generation crypto wallets, opting instead to pursue separate technical proposals. Ethereum is advancing EIP-8141 (“Frame Transactions”), which prioritizes privacy, censorship resistance, and quantum resistance. Base is pursuing its own proposal, EIP-8130, focused on flexibility for high-volume applications and compliance requirements.
Developer Derek Chiang, who was involved in the discussions, said the split came down to competing priorities: “Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base,” while cross-network interoperability “was ultimately secondary.” He added that forcing a common standard would have meant one side giving up features it considered essential.
The breakdown has practical implications for developers. Wallets and applications operating across both Ethereum and Base will now need to support two distinct transaction formats, adding friction for teams building interoperable products across Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem. The episode highlights a broader tension within Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, where individual layer-2 networks increasingly optimize for their own use cases rather than converging on shared technical standards, even as the ecosystem grows more fragmented.
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