Is Coinbase ready to make a comeback in NFT markets? 🥊
"Wallet as a Service” aimed at onboarding mainstream users
Coinbase Eyes Web3 Market
Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has been making efforts to expand its offerings beyond trading-centric products. The company's head of protocols, Jesse Pollak, recently spoke about the company's goal to create a platform that makes it easy for developers to build useful products on an on-chain platform and for users to use those products through interfaces like Coinbase and Coinbase Wallet.
Wallet as a Service
Coinbase launches another product called “Wallet as a Service” aimed at onboarding mainstream users. Coinbase Wallet as a Service is an API that provides companies with a reliable and secure way to offer their users access to web3 wallets. By using “WaaS”, companies can focus on delivering innovative products to their customers while saving resources that would otherwise be spent navigating the complexities of blockchain infrastructure. WaaS offers a user-friendly experience, allowing users to create, access, and restore wallets with simple authentication. Additionally, WaaS employs advanced security measures such as multi-party computation to keep user assets secure. Users retain full control over their assets and can export their keys at any time. Finally, WaaS is designed to scale due to their existing experience in scaling to hundreds of million of users per Coinbases latest article about WaaS.
Coinbase Launches Layer 2 “Base”
Last month, Coinbase launched Base, an Ethereum layer-2 sandbox for decentralized applications, in collaboration with several high-profile blockchain companies, including Chainlink, Etherscan, and Aave. Coinbase has also been iterating on its NFT marketplace, which was launched in April 2022 but did not gain as much traction as expected.
Key Acquisitions
Pollak sees the experience with the NFT marketplace as indicative of Coinbase's innovation culture, taking big bets on big projects like NFTs, Base, and USDC. He also highlighted Coinbase's recent acquisition of digital asset management firm One River Management, which will be rolled into its new Coinbase asset management business line. Pollak believes this will help Coinbase bring in new customers as a registered investment advisor.
Quickly Iterating Into Success?
Coinbase's mission, according to Pollak, is to create useful applications that can be globally available and increase economic freedom, ultimately bringing billions of people into a better way of living. With its recent efforts in expanding beyond trading-centric products, Coinbase may be well-positioned to make a comeback in the NFT markets and become a leading player in the broader crypto ecosystem.
Final Thought
It remains to be seen if Coinbase can turn things around for their NFT marketplace but one thing is for certain that Coinbase seems committed with their key acquisitions and launches. The volume on their NFT marketplace has been very sparse but the amount of user base continues to grow. Coinbase being one the largest US exchange’s and one of the oldest could benefit and serve them well long term with a existing user base using their core services.