Base Cobalt Upgrade — Drastically Lowering Transaction Fees for AI Agents

We are seeing an increase in transactions where AI agents buy and sell services autonomously without human intervention. However, current blockchains are too slow and the fees too burdensome for AI agents that need to make thousands of micro-payments per second. To solve this, Base is preparing a core solution: the 'Cobalt' upgrade, scheduled for September 2026.

Why existing Web3 payments have been too slow and expensive for AI agents

Until now, for an AI agent to spend money autonomously on the blockchain, it had to go through a highly inefficient process. Agents have been using smart contract wallets to automate transactions, which required routing every single transaction through off-chain bundlers and 'paymasters' that act as intermediaries to cover gas fees.

This process involves repetitive, resource-heavy simulations for every transaction sent, leading to significant latency and wasteful gas expenses. It was a slow and bloated structure that simply couldn't handle high-frequency agent-to-agent (A2A) trading where micro-payments worth less than a cent need to be exchanged continuously by the second.

EIP-8130 — Fast and secure authentication at the node level

The core of the Base Cobalt upgrade is the introduction of the EIP-8130 standard. Currently, smart wallets used by AI agents must execute heavy smart contracts to authenticate identity with every single transaction. It’s an inefficient process—like stopping a car and taking out an ID card to be checked every single time you pass through a toll booth.

The Cobalt upgrade transforms this into an 'automated electronic toll' system. Instead of relying on complex smart contracts, transaction authentication is handled directly and statically at the Reth V2 node layer, which is the client execution engine.

Now, when a transaction arrives, the node performs an O(1) complexity operation to instantly verify pre-registered authentication info, rather than running a complex smart contract simulation. The EIP-8130 standard (0x79 transaction type) cleanly separates the signature authentication mechanism from the actual execution entity, as shown in the example below, allowing the node to identify them immediately.

{
  "transactionType": "0x79",
  "accountConfig": {
    "authenticators": ["SECP256k1", "P256_WebAuthn"],
    "actors": ["0xAgentContractAddress..."]
  }
}

As a result, the verification costs that were the primary culprits behind gas waste are dramatically reduced. Consequently, the cost for AI agents to securely verify transactions drops to the level of simple transfers, providing the speed and cost-efficiency needed for high-frequency micro-payments.

EIP-8140 and direct USDC fee payments

Another major headache for AI agents on the blockchain has been gas fees. Agents had to keep a separate balance of Ethereum in their wallets just to execute transactions. Constantly monitoring the ETH exchange rate while calculating service costs in dollars was a significant burden.

EIP-8140, another pillar of the Cobalt upgrade, neatly solves this issue. It is a technology that allows agents to pay gas fees directly in stablecoins like USDC instead of Ethereum. It only requires attaching a small, 52-byte fee token identifier to the transaction data.

Previously, fee sponsorship required going through 'paymasters'—complex smart contracts—which added significant overhead of 29,000 to 45,000 gas. In the new structure, the execution client processes the fee directly via a token payment registry, slashing the sponsorship overhead down to just 13,000 gas.

Thanks to this, agents can skip the complicated currency conversion steps and process tens of thousands of transactions seamlessly, quickly, and efficiently using only USDC.

The catalyst for a true AI agent economy

Base's Cobalt upgrade is more than just a technical patch to slightly boost transaction speeds. It is foundational infrastructure for an independent economic activity where AI agents autonomously communicate and complete transactions without human intervention. Starting from the upgrade in September, it will be exciting to see how services involving real-time, high-frequency micro-payments between agents will proliferate.