Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says his team is in the process of building private transactions that would enable users to control who gets to see their on-chain activity.
Summary
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that Base is developing private transactions using Iron Fish’s zero-knowledge infrastructure, enabling assets like USDC to move through shielded pools that conceal transaction details.
- The announcement sparked debate among users, who questioned how a KYC-compliant and regulated platform could ensure true privacy given Coinbase’s past data leaks and Iron Fish’s view-key feature.
In a recent post, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong quoted another X user’s post about efforts to make stablecoin transactions private. Armstrong said that his team is currently working on enabling private transactions on the network, following its acquisition of layer1 privacy blockchain Iron Fish earlier this year.
“Base is building private transactions. We acquired the Iron Fish team back in Mar 2025 to start working on this. More to share soon,” said Armstrong in his post.
Following the announcement, many users questioned whether the network would be able to fully facilitate such measures, considering they require their users to comply with Know Your Client checks. Not only that, others brought up data security leaks in the past that raise concerns about whether privacy can be guaranteed on the network.
“An exchange which can’t even protect their users’ identities are now building private transactions,” said one X user.
“A regulated CEX that complies with KYC demands, is making privacy transactions… amazing….” wrote another user in the comments section.
The announcement comes as the crypto community starts to gravitate towards private pools like HumidiFi, which briefly overtook Meteora as the largest Solana (SOL) protocol on the DEX ecosystem. Dark pools offer private trading for users who wish to keep their trading activity secret from the wider community.
Private transactions are useful for carrying out high-value trades and large liquidations that users wish to keep private so that other traders do not start ganging up on them to force liquidation. Although many have argued that it goes against the principles of transparency and anti-money laundering standards for on-chain activity monitoring.
How will Base shift into private transactions?
Through the company’s acquisition of Iron Fish’s development team, the network hopes to tap into their expertise in bringing privacy infrastructure into its ecosystem. Iron Fish is a purpose-built privacy-first Layer 1 chain that uses zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs, to hide transaction details such as the identity of the sender, the receiver, and the amount moved.
One of Iron Fish’s key functionalities is bridging assets from transparent chains like Base (BASE) and Ethereum (ETH) into its multi-asset shielded pool.
For example, USDC (USDC) wrapped on compatible chains is bridged into Iron Fish’s privacy layer. A user on Base would be able to send USDC into Iron Fish via a bridge, and once it enters the privacy pool, the transaction becomes invisible, effectively shielding it from the public.
However, Iron Fish’s privacy infrastructure cannot be considered fully private, as it supports “view-keys” that let developers, auditors, or regulators view specific transaction details if the user chooses. This feature is meant to allow transaction data to be shared with authorities if the information is requested, whilst keeping it hidden from the general public.
So far, Iron Fish has offered privacy solutions for around 27 blockchains via Chainport, including Base, which offers users a privacy version of wrapped USDC. The project also hinted at a mobile app release that would provide users with a “truly private, Venmo-like experience with crypto.”
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