Coinbase, the decade-old crypto company, announced at ETH Denver that it is working on its NFT marketplace and on bringing innovation. The announcement was made through Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase head of protocols.
Promoting innovation
Pollak, during the event, said that the exchange has been trading-centric. However, the company has been changing, starting with its Base investment.
Base, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, is easing the developers’ process of building effective products on the Blockchain. Hence, it makes it easy to use dApps via interfaces such as Coinbase Wallet and Coinbase.
Several projects have already signaled they are committed to Base’s use. These include Animoca Brands, Dune Analytics, and DeFi protocol Aave.
In January, the company also introduced new features to the Coinbase Wallet. Some features were transaction previews, a blocklist of flagged dApps, a spam token manager automatically hiding malicious airdrops, and token approval alerts.
Coinbase NFT marketplace
In April 2022, Coinbase launched its NFT marketplace. However, as Pollak mentioned, the product did not work as well as they would have wanted. The company has been “iterating quickly” for the last year or so. It has been producing more signs of life, and much more growth is in sight.
The NFT marketplace experience, according to Pollak, indicated the innovation culture at Coinbase, such as setting up big projects such as Base, NFTs, and USDC.
Free open edition Ethereum NFT
After the Base launch on the platform, Coinbase dropped a free open edition Ethereum NFT that anyone can mint. The “Base, Introduced” NFT was available through Zora, a Web3 creator tool and NFT minting platform. Being an open edition NFT, anyone could claim identical collectibles with an NFT limit of one for each wallet.
During the week, the NFT smart contract became the biggest “gas guzzler” on the Ethereum network. Meanwhile, Coinbase did not promise any upcoming utility for the Base NFTs. However, NFTs were still gaining traction in secondary markets. For example, one of the NFTs, NFT #888, sold for 0.888 ETH (about $1,455). Other three-digit NFT editions have since sold for hundreds of dollars.
One River Management acquisition
The ETH Denver coincided with the Coinbase One River Management acquisition. The company is a digital asset management firm that Coinbase is working to introduce its new asset management business line. Pollak mentions the move will help bring in new customers as it is an investment advisor.
