Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that “private transactions” could soon be available on Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase.

“We acquired the Iron Fish team back in Mar 2025 to start working on this. More to share soon,” said Armstrong on X.

Iron Fish is a privacy-focused proof-of-work project designed to enable private transactions by using zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

At the time of the announcement, Base noted that it had acquired the team behind Iron Fish and not the network, token or technology itself. 

“The Iron Fish blockchain and its native token will remain independent and unaffiliated with Coinbase or Base, maintained by the Iron Fish Foundation,” said the Base team in March.

Still, Armstrong’s X post triggered a 160% spike in the value of Iron Fish’s native token IRON, which rallied to a one-year high of $0.72 on Tuesday.