Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base, just introduced something that could reshape how stablecoins and tokenized assets actually work on Coinbase’s Layer 2 network. It’s called B20, a native token standard purpose-built for regulated financial instruments, and it’s arriving with Base’s Beryl hard fork later this month.
The standard is ERC-20 compatible, meaning existing wallets and dApps won’t need to reinvent the wheel. But under the hood, B20 runs on Rust precompiles instead of traditional Solidity smart contracts, a design choice aimed at squeezing out better execution speed and lower costs.
What B20 actually does
The standard ships with a built-in compliance toolkit that includes granular role assignments for minting and burning tokens. It also features policy-driven allow and block lists, which let issuers control exactly who can hold or transfer their tokens.
B20 also supports transaction memos, optional supply caps, and distinct configurations for what Base is calling its “Asset” and “Stablecoin” variants.
