Embracing Decentralization: Integrating and Building Protocols at Coinbase

By Jesse Pollak, Senior Director of Engineering at Coinbase

Tl;dr:

• Coinbase is dedicated to its imaginative and prescient of investing in web3 and the broader cryptoeconomy.
• We’re embodying this imaginative and prescient by integrating, constructing, and supporting protocols at Coinbase.
• Protocols are more and more built-in into our merchandise, a spotlight for groups throughout the corporate, and a serious funding space for Coinbase Ventures.
• To help this work, we’re rising our Smart Contract Engineering workforce and constructing protocol experience throughout each position.

Over the previous 12 months, Coinbase has begun laying the groundwork to remodel right into a web3 firm. We’re doing this as a result of we count on that enormous parts of the worldwide economic system will transfer “on-chain” within the coming years. This transition will happen as folks globally demand larger entry to monetary providers and possession within the success of the companies they help. Coinbase is positioned to play a key position in growing financial freedom by doubling down on web3 innovation and supporting the event of protocols that put highly effective monetary instruments within the fingers of individuals around the globe. Today, we’re sharing an replace on how we’re integrating, constructing, and supporting these protocols.

Protocols supply a variety of services that permit folks wherever on the planet to transact immediately with one another. For instance, Compound makes it simpler for people to lend or borrow crypto property, giving them entry to capital and better yields with no intermediaries concerned. Another instance is USD Coin, the most important stablecoin on Ethereum with a market capitalization over $50B, that permits folks to simply ship and obtain funds globally utilizing a digital asset that’s pegged to the US greenback. Protocols like these kind the inspiration of the cryptoeconomy that thousands and thousands of individuals work together with every day.

In simply over two years, the worth locked in these protocols has gone from just a few hundred million to over $200B. People everywhere in the world need larger management over their monetary futures and web3 protocols are making {that a} actuality.

At Coinbase, we’re embracing protocols throughout all our strategic pillars with 4 key initiatives:

1. Integrating protocols into our merchandise. In Coinbase Wallet, and our recently launched dapp wallet, we’re natively integrating buying and selling and yield options supported by protocols in addition to enabling open entry to protocols by means of our browser. We lately launched Coinbase NFT, which is powered by the 0x protocol to allow low charge NFT swaps. Additionally, by means of our DeFi Yield product, we’re integrating with protocols like Compound to supply customers in eligible jurisdictions larger yields on their holdings. We are enthusiastic about how protocols can allow higher consumer experiences and intention to maintain integrating them deeply into our merchandise.
2. Building protocols and supporting innovation. We help protocols, no matter how they may immediately combine into Coinbase. We help protocol innovation by means of our Project 10% program, which funds moonshot concepts together with the current Coinbase Ventures funding in Backed. We’re additionally supporting protocol work within the ecosystem by means of our developer grants program and open supply contributions like Rosetta, which makes it simpler to combine protocols into Coinbase. Today, we additionally introduced that Coinbase Cloud is supporting a gaggle of skilled founders and operators who’re constructing the primary enterprise-grade liquid staking protocol.
3. Funding protocols within the broader ecosystem. Coinbase Ventures has invested in protocols all through its lifetime and is an early investor in a number of the most fun web3 protocols, together with Compound, UMA, Saddle, Radicle, Synthetix, Notional, Goldfinch, and others. In the primary quarter of 2022 alone, Coinbase Ventures closed 70+ offers (300+ to this point). It invests throughout the web3 expertise stack and is increasing cross-chain investments past Ethereum with the objective of selling an open multi-chain way forward for finance.
4. Investing in high expertise and core expertise. We’re constructing a best-in-class Smart Contract Engineering workforce to help our protocol work and integrating protocol considering into our product administration observe. Through developer tooling, hackathons, and firm extensive data sharing and experimentation, we’re constructing a group that units the usual for web3 expertise. In the 12 months forward, we’re additionally excited to contribute open supply developer instruments and libraries to help constructing protocols at scale.

Last 12 months we wrote about Coinbase embracing decentralization by including extra property, increasing internationally, integrating with third-party platforms, and emphasizing self-custody. We closed by saying:

Many of probably the most revolutionary use instances in crypto are being created in decentralized apps. By totally embracing this development we are able to put crypto within the fingers of extra folks around the globe and thereby enhance their financial freedom.

We’ve been arduous at work embracing this imaginative and prescient by investing in web3 protocols at Coinbase — and whereas we’ve made intensive progress, we’ve bought a protracted strategy to go. We’re excited for the journey.

If these challenges excite you, be a part of our workforce and assist build an open financial system for the world.

Embracing Decentralization: Integrating and Building Protocols at Coinbase was initially printed in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, the place persons are persevering with the dialog by highlighting and responding to this story.