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Posted on August 10, 2020Welcoming Manish Gupta, Executive Vice-President of Engineering
Welcoming Manish Gupta, Executive Vice President of Engineering
By Brian Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder
As a company of builders, few things are more important than finding experienced, passionate engineers that can help guide Coinbase and our employees through the next phase of company growth. That’s why I’m excited to share today that Manish Gupta is joining Coinbase as our new EVP of Engineering.
Manish joins us from Lyft where he served as VP of Engineering for the last two years, overseeing several rideshare engineering teams. He joined Lyft after 16 years at Google, last holding the role of VP of Engineering for Google’s Ads platform.
The opportunities and challenges at Coinbase and in crypto couldn’t be greater — more people than ever are experiencing the benefits of cryptocurrency, and want access to new crypto-native products and services. Meanwhile, Coinbase is undergoing a shift to being a remote-first company, which will unlock potential but also require the company to learn and iterate within a remote-first culture. Aside from his exceptional engineering experience, Manish impressed us with his positive energy, clear communication, great questions, and passion for the mission and opportunity we have as a company. We look forward to working alongside Manish to build a more open financial system.
Welcome to Coinbase, Manish!
Welcoming Manish Gupta, Executive Vice-President of Engineering was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 5, 2020Band Protocol (BAND) is launching on Coinbase Pro
On Monday, August 10, BAND entered transfer-only mode. Inbound transfers for BAND are now available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. Traders cannot place orders and no orders will be filled. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) the following day, if liquidity conditions are met.
One of the most common requests we receive from customers is to be able to trade more assets on our platform. Per the terms of our listing process, we anticipate supporting more assets that meet our standards over time. Most recently we have added Compound (COMP), Maker (MKR) and OmiseGo (OMG), along with supporting additional European and UK order books. Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets.
On Monday, August 10, we will begin accepting inbound transfers of BAND to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) the following day, if liquidity conditions are met. Please note that Coinbase Pro will only accept inbound transfers of ERC-20 BAND tokens at this time.
Once sufficient supply of BAND is established on the platform, trading on our BAND-USD, BAND-BTC, BAND-EUR and BAND-GBP order books will launch in four phases, transfer-only, post-only, limit-only and full trading. If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules.
We will publish tweets from our Coinbase Pro Twitter account as each order book moves through the phases.
Band Protocol (BAND) is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts.
Please note that BAND is not yet available on Coinbase.com or via our Consumer mobile apps. We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added.
You can sign up for a Coinbase Pro account here to start trading. For more information on trading BAND on Coinbase Pro, visit our support page.
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This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.
All images provided herein are by Coinbase.
Band Protocol (BAND) is launching on Coinbase Pro was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 4, 2020Greg Tusar, co-founder of Tagomi and electronic trading pioneer, joins Coinbase as Vice President…
Greg Tusar, co-founder of Tagomi and electronic trading pioneer, joins Coinbase as Vice President of Institutional Products
By Surojit Chatterjee, Chief Product Officer
Today we are announcing that Greg Tusar is joining Coinbase as VP of Institutional Products. Greg joins us as part of our recently announced acquisition of Tagomi, a company he co-founded and where he went on to serve as chief technology officer. Greg brings more than three decades of experience to his role as Vice President of Institutional Products. Most recently he founded Tagomi, a world-class trading platform that is in the process of being integrated into Coinbase’s industry-leading institutional suite of products.
A builder at heart, prior to founding Tagomi with partners Jennifer Campbell and Marc Bhargava, Greg spent over 30 years in a range of electronic trading, technical infrastructure and market structure roles. These included serving as a partner and Global Head of Electronic Trading at Goldman Sachs, and Head of Client Market Making and Execution Services at KCG Holdings (now part of Virtu Inc.).
As Coinbase continues to build the platforms and services that professional and institutional investors expect, we’re committed to bringing in the best leadership possible to guide our product vision. We strongly believe that it’s only with the right combination of technology and people that we will usher in the next phase of crypto’s institutional adoption.
Greg joins Coinbase at a time when many of the world’s top hedge funds and macro investors are entering the space and searching for the right infrastructure through which to engage with crypto. Much like traditional finance, institutional investors play a critical role in the crypto markets. First and foremost, institutions stand to bring more individuals into the ecosystem through vehicles like mutual or index funds, and through indirect exposure such as pension fund allocations. Institutional investors also drive innovation in financial markets. This takes the form of both technology and investment instruments, which over time, become available to non-professional traders. Finally, institutions have extremely high compliance, security and auditing standards. In fact, many funds will not be able to invest in certain asset classes unless there’s an institutional-grade infrastructure in place to support them. And just as technology and instruments make their way into the hands of retail investors over time, the compliance, auditing and security standards that institutional investors require will only stand to benefit those downstream.
Greg’s role will build on a period of significant progress for Coinbase’s institutional offerings, including our recent acquisition of Tagomi, the leading crypto prime brokerage platform, as well as the recent announcement of Brett Tejpaul as our head of institutional coverage, and the rollout of margin trading to institutional investors in 45 states across the US. In partnership with Brett and our Institutional Coverage team, Greg will focus on building out our institutional trading infrastructure and integrating Tagomi’s industry-leading prime brokerage platform into Coinbase’s institutional product suite, which includes Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Custody.
Greg’s experience in both electronic trading and execution as well as trading infrastructure make him uniquely qualified to guide Coinbase’s institutional products as more professional traders and funds seek to allocate portions of their portfolios to crypto assets.
Greg Tusar, co-founder of Tagomi and electronic trading pioneer, joins Coinbase as Vice President… was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 3, 2020How Coinbase handled ETH network congestion on August 1, 2020
On August 1st, the Ethereum network experienced spikes in transaction fees which led to delayed deposits/withdrawals for some Coinbase customers. Starting at 9:45pm PST, 559 transactions were delayed. The backlog of transactions started clearing 15 minutes after the peak of the fee spike and was fully processed in 110 minutes. Trading and application uptime were not impacted by this spike. This post provides some more detail about what occurred.
Background
All transactions on Ethereum are required to pay a fee in order to be processed by the network. This network fee is determined by the variable demand for fixed processing capacity on the Ethereum network — when many users are attempting to send transactions at the same time, fees will rise, and they will fall when fewer users are using the network.
At Coinbase, we determine a fee rate that maximizes the speed that a transaction will be processed while simultaneously minimizing how much our users must pay. To this end, we actively track the fee required for a transaction to be included in the subsequent few blocks in real-time. However, spikes in network fees can lead to transactions becoming stuck — i.e. a newer, higher fee transaction will be prioritized by miners over an older, lower fee transaction.
August 1, 2020 Fee Spikes
On August 1st, at around 9:45pm PST, we observed a spike in transaction fees on the decentralized network.
Throughout this spike period, our systems performed as expected and determined a fee that was accurate at the time of estimation. This spike led to a backlog of transactions that were not being picked up by miners and resulted in delayed withdrawals from Coinbase.
Other major exchanges and wallets determine fees in the same way, leading to many users’ deposits into Coinbase being delayed as well.
At the peak of this fee spike we observed a total of 559 transactions being delayed across ETH and ERC20s with the average delay spiking at 11:30pm PST at 105 minutes. Transactions broadcast at and after the peak of this spike (10:05pm PST) were not impacted.
The fee spike ended at 10:05pm PST, causing the backlog of transactions to start being processed by the network. The backlog was fully processed by 11:40pm PST.
Looking Ahead
Fee spikes are a common occurrence and are often observed when the network is congested due to price volatility or large network activity. At Coinbase we have implemented transaction replacement which allows us to adjust fees for transactions that we submit to the network after the submission.
As the activity on the Ethereum ecosystem is increasing we are actively monitoring and evaluating our fee strategies to find the right balance between being a good citizen of the network and providing the best experience to our customers.
If you are interested in working on our Crypto team — we are actively hiring. Please reach out and we would love to chat with you.
How Coinbase handled ETH network congestion on August 1, 2020 was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 31, 2020Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets
We are continuing to explore the addition of new assets for customers around the world.
Coinbase’s goal is to offer support for all assets that meet our technical standards and which comply with applicable laws. Over time we expect our customers around the world will have access through Coinbase platforms to at least 90% of the aggregate market cap of all digital assets in circulation.
We will continue to evaluate prospective assets against our Digital Asset Framework to assess factors like security, compliance, and the project’s alignment with our mission of creating an open financial system for the world. To apply for listing, fill out an application here.
Digital Assets Under Review
Today we’re announcing that we are exploring the addition of a range of new assets. As part of the exploratory process customers may see public-facing APIs and other signs that we are conducting engineering work to potentially support these assets.
These new assets include, in alphabetical order: Ampleforth, Band Protocol, Balancer, Blockstack, Curve, Fetch.ai, Flexacoin, Helium, Hedera Hashgraph, Kava, Melon, Ocean Protocol, Paxos Gold, Reserve Rights, tBTC, The Graph, THETA, UMA, and WBTC
Our decision to support any asset requires significant technical and compliance review and may be subject to regulatory approval in some jurisdictions. We therefore cannot guarantee whether or when any above-listed asset will be listed on a Coinbase product in any jurisdiction. As per our listing process, we will add new assets on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis, subject to applicable review and authorizations. The omission of assets from this publication does not disqualify any such asset from active review and potential listing.
Our customers can expect Coinbase to make future, similar announcements as we continue to explore the addition of numerous assets across the platform.
To read previously announced assets that Coinbase may still be exploring see; Jul 13, 2018, Dec 7, 2018, Aug 5, 2019, Sep 1, 2019, June 10, 2020.
This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.
All images provided herein are by Coinbase. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 29, 2020Who should join Coinbase: Builders
Coinbase is an exciting and unique company and as we continue growing, it’s important that we create a strong culture. A few years ago, I wrote in the Coinbase culture doc:
Hire builders
We hire people who are passionate about creating new products with technology. We look for entrepreneurs who are comfortable with ambiguity. We prefer to work with people who actually execute toward ideas, instead of just coming up with them. When the creative moment strikes, we try not to let big company process get in the way or slow them down.Today, I want to expand on this concept, and flesh out what it means to hire builders, so that people thinking of joining Coinbase can make an informed decision.
What do I mean when I say we want to hire builders?
At the root, builders create value in the world instead of taking or destroying it. They help build companies and make products, because they want to improve the world. When builders make things people want, not only do they solve customer problems, they also create jobs, grow the economy, and generate wealth in society.
Builders love working on important and ambitious missions. They know that the only way to accomplish a mission like this is with relentless focus. They try to ignore all of the other things that can distract a company, and keep the team united toward this goal, with everyone rowing in the same direction. They want to know how their work connects to the mission, and try to maximize the percent of their time that goes to delivering customer value.
Builders are pro technology. They recognize that science and engineering are some of the best levers we have to improve the world. In every industry, including education, financial services, healthcare, entertainment, energy, and more, the greatest improvements we’re seeing are coming from technology. Technology is what can help solve the world’s biggest problems, from climate change to improving education. Technology also drives down costs, making expensive initial prototypes eventually cheap enough for everyone. Builders are technological progressives: they believe that by investing in science, engineering, and technology we can create a better world.
Builders are inherent optimists. They believe the future will be better, and they have a plan to get there. They recognize that, over the arc of history, the human condition has improved dramatically, and that this trend can continue, when smart, dedicated people come together to build solutions. They recognize that “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world….[and] indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Builders are supportive of others who are trying to improve the world. They recognize that it’s easy to be a critic, but it’s hard to build something new that really helps people. They celebrate people who attempt the impossible and stumble, instead of trying to tear them down or belittle them, because they know how difficult it is to build.
Builders are unusually resilient and determined. They move from one setback to the next with enthusiasm. They know that it took Thomas Edison many attempts to create the light bulb, the Wright Brothers many attempts to achieve the first powered flight, and NASA many attempts (and human lives) to reach the moon. They have the audacity to believe they can achieve the impossible, and pick themselves up, even after repeated failure. They manage their own psychology to keep morale high, especially when the going gets tough.
Builders work hard. They want to join winning teams where sustained high performance is expected from everyone, because they recognize this improves their chances of building something great. And they also work hard because they love it. They find it incredibly fulfilling to work on something that matters. At the same time, they know how to rest and avoid burnout, to improve their productivity and creativity over the long term.
Builders care about profit because a company without profit is less likely to accomplish its mission. More capital means a company can hire more builders to come join the team, and it is an important measure of whether customer value is really being created. They also want to own a piece of the businesses they help create, not only so they can create wealth for themselves and their families, but also so they can invest it in the future.
Builders care about responsibility to society. They only want to build products that are good for humanity, and minimize negative externalities. But they recognize that this is complex: the things people want are not always what is good for them, and any tool can be used for good or bad purposes. They know that they always have to be able to look themselves in the mirror, and believe they are net contributing to society. They don’t believe in taking shortcuts that would temporarily increase profitability. They optimize for the long term goal.
Builders believe in creative disruption and free markets. They want the best product at the lowest price to win, as determined by the customer, to accelerate progress in society. They don’t want any handouts and they don’t want entrenched incumbents to have an unfair advantage. They want their product to survive solely based on whether customers vote for it with their dollars.
Builders take a global perspective because they want to improve the lives of as many people as possible. They know that focusing on the largest market, say the U.S., may only allow them to reach 4.3% of the global population. With technology improving distribution and lowering costs, builders are increasingly able to have a global reach.
With this understanding of builders, my hope is that people can make a more informed decision about whether Coinbase is the right place for them. It takes a wide variety of people to come together and make a company like Coinbase work. We have many roles and opportunities, but we all share some of these values around how to make a contribution to the world.
The mission of Coinbase is to create an open financial system for the world. This is no small task. It’s going to require dedicated focus for many years to come, and there will be many milestones and setbacks along the way. For those who join the team, they will know that they put a dent in the universe, and helped create economic freedom for millions of people around the world. Please check out our open roles here.
Who should join Coinbase: Builders was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 29, 2020Coinbase launches Dai Rewards for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and…
Coinbase launches Dai Rewards for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Australia
At Coinbase, we want to offer more ways for customers to earn rewards with their crypto. Last year, for example, we began offering stablecoin rewards to US customers for every USD Coin (USDC) held on Coinbase. We also launched Dai on Coinbase Earn, where customers can earn crypto by watching videos and taking quizzes about different cryptocurrencies.
Today, we’re introducing Dai Rewards, with 2% APY* for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Australia. With yields on savings accounts and government bonds at record lows, earning rewards on stablecoins like Dai and USDC stands out as an alternative way to passively generate income using crypto held on Coinbase.
Stablecoins that aim to maintain a stable value of $1, like USDC and Dai, can be useful because they are not subject to the same volatility as many other cryptocurrencies. This is one reason stablecoins have grown to a market cap of more than $12 billion, as people use them to hold funds without volatility, transfer funds quickly and cheaply, and gain exposure to the US dollar.
Eligible customers will begin earning rewards automatically once they have $1 of Dai in their Coinbase accounts. Initial rewards will be distributed within five business days, then every day following, which means customers can use or withdraw their rewards as soon as they receive them. Customers always maintain control of their funds — their Dai stays in their accounts and can be withdrawn instantly at any time.
To get started with Dai Rewards, customers can simply buy Dai on Coinbase or send Dai to their Coinbase accounts from an external wallet.
*Learn more about eligibility and APY on our support center and our Dai Rewards terms.
Coinbase launches Dai Rewards for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and… was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 24, 2020Around the Block #7: Understanding yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi
Coinbase Around the Block, sheds light on key issues in the crypto space. In this edition, Justin Mart explores the rapidly evolving DeFi landscape and the emergence of “yield farming”, as well as other notable news in the space.
DeFi and the Yield Farming Phenomenon
DeFi protocols exploded in all metrics over the last month, passing $3B in Total Value Locked (TVL), triggered by the launch of the Compound governance token ($COMP) and subsequent “yield farming.”
What is Yield Farming?
Most crypto protocols are designed to be decentralized. For base-level networks (like Bitcoin and Ethereum), this is achieved through Proof of Work, where anyone can be a miner and earn some BTC or ETH in exchange for helping secure the network. In so doing, control of the network is more or less democratic (one CPU one vote).
But how do projects built on Ethereum achieve decentralization? One path is to hand over governance in the form of tokens to the users of a protocol, effectively turning users into stakeholders. This is precisely what Compound (an autonomous borrow/lend protocol) pioneered. They are releasing $COMP tokens, which provides governance rights over the Compound protocol, to the users of the network, distributed pro-rata according to how much they use the protocol.
Sounds good, right? Two observations:
- $COMP governance tokens hold value. Compound is the leading DeFi borrow/lend protocol, and governance rights over this network are powerful.
- Distributing $COMP pro-rata to users of the protocol is free yield. It’s an added bonus just for using Compound.
When $COMP was released, the token quickly appreciated in value owing to Compound’s leading position in the DeFi ecosystem. The community quickly realized that adding assets to Compound and/or borrowing against them resulted in significant interest rates due to the additional $COMP being distributed (topping 100% APY at some points).
Ergo, the practice of using a protocol to earn native platform tokens is known as “yield farming.”
What Happened with Compound
Yield farming drove a flood of capital into Compound — in a single week in mid-June nearly half a billion dollars was added to Compound, driving total value locked (TVL) from $100M to over $1.7 B at the peak. $COMP similarly opened trading around $80 and exploded to over $300.
However, not all metrics are as honest as they appear. With Compound, it’s possible to recursively invest your capital, multiplying your yield. It goes like this:
- Add 100 USDC as collateral to Compound (earning interest + $COMP)
- Borrow 70 DAI against your 100 USDC collateral (paying interest but earning $COMP)
- Trade 70 DAI for 70 USDC (bonus: on a DEX)
- Repeat Step 1
DeFi composability adds another dimension, where it’s also possible to stack your yield across different protocols. For example, you could lock DAI in Compound, and deposit your compound-DAI tokens into Balancer for additional yield farming.
Popular DeFi tracker defipulse.com does some cleaning on reported TVL to account for these effects. As of July 23, 2020 they report Compound’s TVL at $550M.
Yield Farming is Not Without Risk
In efficient markets, increased yield is reflective of increased risk. While DeFi is a largely inefficient market today, outsized DeFi yields are still indicative of additional risk:
- Smart Contract risk: Smart contracts are prone to exploits, with several examples just this year (bZx, Curve, lendf.me). The surge in DeFi has led to millions in value being slammed into nascent protocols, increasing the incentive for attackers to find exploits.
- System design risk: Many protocols are nascent and the incentives can be gamed. (E.g., Balancer, where FTX was able to capture >50% of the yield due to a simple flaw)
- Liquidation risk: Collateral is subject to volatility, and debt positions are at risk of becoming undercollateralized in market swings. Liquidation mechanisms may not be efficient, and could be subject to further loss.
- Bubble risk: The price dynamics of the underlying network tokens (like $COMP) are reflexive because expected future value follows usage, and usage is incentivized by expected future value.
In general, DeFi protocols with significant capital are honeypots for exploits. In just one week, the Balancer protocol was gamed by an exchange, changed its protocol rules, got hacked, and saw the token price go up 3x! In some ways DeFi is still the wild west — be careful out there.
Downstream effects: A Look at the Broader DeFi Ecosystem
DEX Volume explodes, begins to rival Centralized Exchange volumes
DEX volume rocketed upwards over the last month, and has begun to rival some centralized exchanges.
This is a direct result of yield farming, especially when recursively borrowing and lending requires swapping between two different ERC-20 tokens. Stablecoins have been most preferred (as in the example above), which led to Curve’s rise to dominance (a stablecoin-specific DEX).
DEXs are also following a similar and proven growth strategy that gave rise to popular exchanges in early 2017: access to the long-tail of tokens / assets not listed on other exchanges. In this case, DEXs provide liquidity for all DeFi tokens and projects. Token creation will likely outpace how quickly centralized exchanges can add them, making DEXs the natural playground for novel new assets and the long-tail of smaller assets.
DEXs have done over $1B in total DEX volume over the last 7 days, over 3x of total 2019 DEX volume! More volume than ever is flowing through DEXs. See a prior Around the Block analysis on DEXs and their coming potential for more.
DeFi Stablecoins see strong Q2 growth
Stablecoins used within DeFi (notably Dai and USDC) saw record Q2 growth, as these are preferred yield-farming assets owing to their low volatility which prevents liquidation risk. Both USDC and Dai market caps saw >50% growth, moving from $700M to $1.1B, and $100M to $150M respectively since the launch of $COMP.
Market Cap of All ETH Tokens Surpasses ETH
The market cap of all ETH tokens recently surpassed the market cap of ETH itself. While driven mostly by a few assets (LINK and CRO), this is still an intriguing flip showing how the ETH ecosystem is expanding in value faster than the base native asset.
If you believe in the fat protocol thesis, then it may indicate ETH is undervalued, as growth in the utility layer would eventually accrue to the base layer. But if you don’t, it could raise questions around Ethereum’s long-term security model, where it might be economically rational to attack Ethereum in order to extract value from assets sitting on top.
Ethereum Suffers Periods of Congestion; Highlighting Scaling Challenges
Predictably, DeFi activity produced a rise in median gas prices, ranging between 40 and 70 Gwei today. A single ETH transfer costs ~$0.35, but more complex operations like swapping assets on a DEX or entering and exiting multiple yield-farming positions can be substantially more expensive (at times >$10 per transaction).
High gas fees are sneakily insidious because they restrict access to DeFi to only those with sufficient capital. When it costs $10 to enter and exit yield farming positions, the subset of users with limited balances are cut off.
High gas fees are a direct consequence of scaling challenges. While still a drag today, efforts around ETH 2.0 and Layer-2 solutions show meaningful progress, but we’ll have to wait and see how those efforts play out.
Other DeFi projects surge
- Wrapped BTC Projects: Wrapped BTC projects create an Ethereum ERC-20 token that is redeemable 1:1 for BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain, thus marrying the BTC and ETH chains and bringing BTC’s balance sheet into DeFi. These projects rose substantially as users sought out more capital for yield farming. BitGo’s wBTC and Ren’s rBTC are notable standouts, with ~$140M BTC locked between them (and wBTC the clear leader with $130M).
- Balancer: A liquidity provider and DEX similar to Uniswap launches with a yield farming governance token, and quickly grows to over $200M TVL.
- Aave: A borrow / lend protocol similar to Compound, but with added flash-loan capabilities, a native $LEND governance token, and differentiating loan products. $LEND value has increased significantly following $COMP’s rapid rise, and Aave’s TVL has similarly exploded to over $450M.
- Synthetix: A synthetic-asset protocol on Ethereum with similar yield-farming mechanics, Synthetix has also seen incredible growth. Their synthetic dollar sUSD has captured volume amidst the stablecoin explosion.
- yEarn Finance: A suite of DeFi products, including a robo advisor that allocates your deposits to the highest-yielding protocols. They released a governance token over the weekend ($YFI) with unique properties in that it has no previous owners and no outside funding, a fixed supply, and is earned through yield farming. Upon launch, capital rushed toward farming and yields went as high as 1,000% APR.
- Infrastructure: Chainlink, aiming to become the oracle bridge powering the suite of crypto and DeFi Dapps, surges to ATH above $8 and cracks top-10 by market cap; InstaDapp surges to nearly $200M in TVL as a simple platform to easily manage yield farming positions.
- Others: Ampleforth’s unique “uncorrelated token” surges; UMA releases a synthetic COMP token (yCOMP) to enable shorts, and a yield-dollar for fixed-interest loans; mStable holds token sale for their stablecoin protocol standard; bZx jumps on with uniswap offering of their governance token.
Implications: Is this activity genuine?
For all the impressive metrics, the rise in asset valuations, and meteoric growth in value locked, is it really genuine activity?
We noted earlier that value locked can be gamed, where assets can be recursively deposited or stacked across other protocols. This has certainly led to some strange results. Consider Compound’s accounting for DAI, where they list more DAI in Compound’s supply than DAI that exists! This can only be possible when the same DAI is supplied, borrowed, and re-supplied in a recursive loop.
So if we can’t take TVL at face value, what can we say about the number of users accessing DeFi?
Numbers are low relative to traction enjoyed by mainstream exchanges (like Coinbase with 35M+ accounts), but the DeFi trend has still driven strong growth, over 100% YTD. Note that there are no “accounts” in DeFi, just unique addresses, so numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s relatively clear that the DeFi phenomenon is still refined to the sophisticated crypto user, able to navigate the world of self-custodial wallets and understand the risks and opportunities that lie within.
And yet, the metrics still cannot be ignored. Even accounting for recursive yield mechanisms, $3B in TVL across all of DeFi is hard to argue against. The traction and usage is on a clear upwards trajectory, and DeFi is the prominent narrative within crypto today.
Are the valuations and returns sustainable?
Taking a step back, we can see a clear cycle:
- Protocols add yield-farming governance tokens
- Total Value Locked (TVL) increases as users farm governance tokens
- Governance token valuations increase on the back of skyrocketing TVL and metrics
- Yield farming incentives increase, repeating step 2
Such cycles are usually indicative of valuations divorced from fundamentals.
However, this is how crypto historically bootstraps growth. Outsized financial incentives drive increased user awareness, and people run through brick walls to participate. Over time, the onramps become smoother, the revenue models more refined, and the products get more user-friendly.
So this looks similar to what was happening with Bitcoin in 2013. Only a select few were able to get ahold of Bitcoin back then, but price movements drove awareness and growth. The destinations were a bit sketchy (Mt. Gox), but got much better over time.
Today, DeFi returns are sparking similar levels of awareness, but only the crypto-sophisticated are running through hoops to capitalize. There is some fuzziness in the numbers, but the trend is hard to argue against, and the products and experience will get better over time.
Where the markets and interest rates move from here is speculation, but for more see this insightful Twitter thread.
Links
Coinbase news
- Coinbase to acquire leading institutional crypto brokerage, Tagomi
- Paul Grewal, former US Magistrate Judge, joins Coinbase as Chief Legal Officer
- Coinbase Custody selected by 21Shares for Bitcoin ETP
- Compound (COMP) launches on Coinbase Earn and Coinbase Pro
- Coinbase open sources software used to integrate new blockchains
- Maker (MKR) and Algorand are now available on Coinbase
- Coinbase Custody launches staking for Cosmos
- Coinbase prevented Twitter hackers from receiving over $280K in BTC
News from the crypto industry
- Twitter accounts of major exchanges, and political figures compromised amidst Twitter hack to perpetuate Bitcoin giveaway scam
- Paypal announces plans to add crypto trading services; partners with Paxos
- Crypto-card issuer Wirecard implodes, leaving crypto card companies scrambling
- Mastercard welcomes Crypto Companies via new card program in partnership with Wirex
- Binance to launch crypto payments card in Europe; acquires debit card provider Swipe
- Brave partners with Gemini to offer crypto trading in-browser
Institutional crypto news
- US Bank regulators approve US Banks to offer crypto custody services
- Grayscale reports record $900M inflows in Q2 🔥
- BitMEX parent company restructures, potentially exploring products outside crypto
- Anchorage announces Anchorage Finance to offer crypto-collateralized cash loans
- Galaxy Digital gearing up for Prime Brokerage offering
- Huobi to launch options trading
- Kraken’s Crypto Facilities wins UK license to offer derivatives trading
News from emerging crypto businesses
- Uniswap rivals Gemini’s daily volume amidst DeFi explosion; launches decentralized frontend via IPFS
- USDC’s inaugural use for Angel Investment Angel Investment 💪; hits $1B in AUC
- FTX adds compound-token markets, enabling exposure to Compound yield farming while trading
- Balancer exploited for $500K amidst yield farming phenomenon
- UMA launches yCOMP and yield-dollar, enabling shorting on $COMP and fixed-interest loans
- Liquid (Bitcoin sidechain) held brief moment where 2 of 3 operators could have stolen all funds
- Bitcoin mining hits new All-Time High shortly after halvening
- Bitcoin Gold 51% attack attempt foiled by core devs
- ETH 2.0 final testnet set to go live; prediction markets show a near 60% chance of going live in 2020
- Aave launches service for unsecured P2P loans on ETH
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase, and all trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.
Around the Block #7: Understanding yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 17, 2020Introduction to Building on DeFi with Ethereum and USDC — Part 1
Introduction to Building on DeFi with Ethereum and USDC — Part 1
By Pete Kim
At Coinbase, our mission is to build an open financial system. We strongly believe that increasing economic freedom will make the world a better place. Decentralized Finance, or DeFi for short — an open, borderless, and programmable version of finance — is an inseparable part of that vision.
Smart Contracts
DeFi is powered by smart contracts running on decentralized networks such as Ethereum (“the blockchain”) and digital currencies like USD Coin (USDC), a tokenization of US Dollars on the blockchain. The idea of smart contracts is actually quite simple. Nick Szabo, a pioneer in digital currency and cryptography who originally came up with the idea in 1997 described the vending machine as the ancestor of smart contracts.
The vending machine is an automated version of a contract, expressed in the form of electrical hardware:
- You pay the displayed price by inserting money into the machine, the machine dispenses a drink
- You don’t pay the displayed price, it doesn’t dispense a drink
- If you paid the displayed price but the machine didn’t dispense a drink, or if it dispensed a drink even though you didn’t pay the displayed price, then there is a violation of the contract
The vending machine is able to manage its contractual obligations completely autonomously without human intervention.
Modern smart contracts work the same way, but the contractual clauses are expressed as executable computer code as opposed to being implemented in hardware. The decentralized nature of the network on top of which smart contracts are run ensures that they are executed as written and that no single entity is able to bend the rules or manipulate the outcome. One important caveat is that because the network executes the code verbatim, faulty smart contract code can result in unexpected consequences (“code is law”).
No Better Time Than Now
A lot of people find building on crypto and blockchain very intimidating and think it is only accessible to hard-core computer scientists. While that may have been true as recently as just a few years ago, tooling and developer UX have improved significantly since then, and anyone with basic programming skills can start building (or BUIDLing).
The DeFi ecosystem is currently undergoing explosive growth. USDC reached a $1B market cap in less than 2 years, and the total value of assets stored in various DeFi services blew past $2B in less than 3 years. There really has not been a better time to start developing in this space.
Source: DeFi Pulse The tutorial below serves as a simple guide to begin developing your own DeFi smart contracts. It is our hope that such a guide will help democratize the creation of a global, open financial system.
Getting Started
This tutorial series assumes that you have some experience with JavaScript, which is the most widely used programming language in the world. You will also be introduced to Solidity, a smart contract programming language used on Ethereum, which is the most widely used smart contract blockchain in the world. Finally, you will get to interact with USDC, the most widely adopted fiat-backed stablecoin in DeFi applications.
Setting up the Development Environment
To get started, we’re going to need a Unix-like environment and Node.js v12.x (the latest LTS release) installed on it. macOS is natively a Unix environment, and Windows users can get it by installing Ubuntu on WSL from the Microsoft Store. More detailed steps can be found here for macOS, and here for Windows. As for the text editor, Visual Studio Code is strongly recommended because the project template you’ll be using comes pre-configured for it, but you can technically use any editor. Oh, and I prefer Vim keybindings over Emacs.
Setting up the Project
It takes some work to set up a Solidity project, and honestly getting distracted by it isn’t very useful for learning at this stage, so a pre-configured template has been prepared for you.
Run the following commands in your terminal to download and setup the template:
$ git clone https://github.com/CoinbaseStablecoin/solidity-tutorial.git
$ cd solidity-tutorial
$ npm install -g yarn # Install yarn package manager
$ yarn # Install project dependenciesYou may see some compilation errors as yarn tries to build native extensions. Those are optional and it is safe to ignore the errors. As long as you see the “Done” message at the end, you’re good to go.
Opening the Project in Visual Studio Code
Open the project folder (solidity-tutorial) in Visual Studio Code. The first time the project is open, Visual Studio Code may prompt you to install extensions. Go ahead and click on “Install All”, this will add various useful extensions such as automatic code formatting and Solidity syntax highlighting to the editor.
Creating an Account on Ethereum
Before you can do anything on Ethereum, you need to have an account. Accounts are often called “wallets”, because they can contain digital assets like ETH and USDC. End users typically create accounts by using an Ethereum wallet app like Coinbase Wallet or Metamask, but creating an account programmatically is really simple as well, using the excellent ethers.js library that comes preinstalled with the template.
Create a new JavaScript file called createWallet.js in the src folder, and enter the following code:
Save the file, and execute the code using Node.js as follows:
$ node src/createWallet.js
Mnemonic: rabbit enforce proof always embrace tennis version reward scout shock license wing
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956aWhat just happened? Well, you got yourself a brand-spanking new Ethereum account. The “mnemonic” or perhaps more commonly referred to as “recovery phrase” is a human-readable representation of the cryptographic key that is needed to perform actions from the account, and the address is the name and identifier of the account. Copy those down somewhere. On a side note, the mnemonic shown in this post has been slightly altered to discourage you from using it, please use your own!
Think of those as the password and the account number to your bank account, except you could create one in just a few seconds, and you didn’t have to fill out an application form or share any personal information. You can also run this code wherever you are.
⚠️ The account’s mnemonic must be kept a secret. If you lose it, you will lose access to your account and any assets stored in the account forever and no one will be able to help you! Keep it in a safe place!
ℹ️ Technically, you haven’t really “created” an account per se. Instead, what you created was a private/public key pair. If you are curious about what is actually happening under the hood, read about elliptic-curve cryptography, and the Bitcoin and Ethereum specifications BIP39, BIP32, EIP55 and their implementation in this project.
About Gas and Mining
Ethereum is a decentralized network of thousands of computers around the world, and they don’t exactly do work for free. To perform any state change on the blockchain such as storing and updating data, you have to pay the network operators a transaction fee in Ether (ETH), also known as “gas” on Ethereum. This, along with the bonus reward the operators get for adding new blocks to the chain, is what incentivizes them to keep their computers up and running. This process is called “mining” and the network operators are called “miners”. We will be revisiting this later in this tutorial (Gas, Gas Price and Gas Limit).
Obtaining Testnet ETH
Now that you have an account, you should deposit some ETH. We don’t want to waste real money while developing, so we are going to get some fake-ETH meant for developing and testing on the test network (“testnet”) instead. There are many different Ethereum testnets, but we are going to be using Ropsten because of the ease of obtaining test tokens. First, let’s check your current balance using Etherscan, a block explorer for Ethereum. You can do that by entering the following URL in your browser, replacing YOUR_ADDRESS with the address you created earlier, starting with 0x.
https://ropsten.etherscan.io/address/YOUR_ADDRESS
Source: ropsten.etherscan.io You should see that your balance is 0 ETH. Keep this tab open, and open Ropsten Ethereum Faucet in a different tab. In the faucet page, enter your address and click on the “Send me” button. The transaction may take as little as a few seconds to a minute or two to complete. Check Etherscan again in a bit, and you should see a new balance of 1 ETH and an incoming transaction in the list.
Source: faucet.ropsten.be Getting ETH Balance Programmatically
Connecting to Ethereum
Using Etherscan to view the balance is useful, but it is also easy to view it with code as well. Before we get back to the code however, we need a way to connect to Ethereum. There are many ways to do it, including running a network node yourself on your computer, but by far the quickest and the easiest way is to do it through a managed node provider such as INFURA or Alchemy. Head over to INFURA, create a free account and create a new project to obtain the API Key (Project ID).
ℹ️ Go Ethereum (“geth”) and Open Ethereum (formerly known as Parity Ethereum) are the two most widely used Ethereum node software.
Viewing ETH Balance with Code
First, let’s write code that reads and derives the account back from the mnemonic. Create a new JavaScript file called wallet.js in the src folder, and enter the following code:
Replace the mnemonic string in the code with your own. Please note that in production code, the mnemonic shouldn’t be hard-coded like that. Instead it should be read from a config file or an environment variable, so that it does not get leaked accidentally for instance by having it checked into a source code repository.
Executing the code, you should be able to see the same address as the one you got earlier:
$ node src/wallet.js
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Next, create a new file called provider.js in the same folder. In this file, we will be initializing a provider object with the INFURA API key we obtained earlier. Be sure to replace the API key string with your own:
Finally, we will use both wallet.js and provider.js we created in a new file called getBalance.js in the same folder to get ETH balance:
Run the code, and you’ll see your ETH balance!
$ node src/getBalance.js
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
ETH Balance: 1.0Token Denominations
The code we just created is pretty self-explanatory, but you may be wondering what ethers.utils.formatUnits(balance, 18) does. Well, ETH is actually divisible to 18 decimal places, and the smallest denomination unit is called “wei” (pronounced “way”). In other words, one ETH is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 wei. Another commonly seen denomination is Gwei (pronounced “Giga-way”), which is 1,000,000,000 wei. The getBalance method happens to return the result in wei, so we have to convert it back to ETH by multiplying the result by 10¹⁸. The full list of the denominations can be found here.
ℹ️ You can also use ethers.utils.formatEther(balance), which is a shorthand for ethers.utils.formatUnits(balance, 18).
Obtaining Testnet USDC
The ETH in your account is feeling a little bit lonely, so let’s also get some USDC in it as well. I’ve deployed a pseudo USDC smart contract on the Ropsten testnet. There isn’t a fancy faucet website for it, but the contract contains a function that will give you some free testnet USDC when called. If you navigate to the contract code tab in Etherscan and search for gimmeSome in the contract source code. That is the function we’ll be calling to get some USDC sent to our account.
Making a Transaction to Call a Smart Contract Function
In Ethereum smart contracts there are mainly two types of functions: read-write and read-only. The former may result in a change in the data stored in the blockchain, and the latter purely reads, but never writes. Read-only functions can be called without creating a transaction and therefore without a transaction fee, unless called as part of a read-write function. Read-write functions on the other hand must be called inside a transaction, and the transaction fee (gas) must be paid. Invoking the gimmeSome function results in a change in the USDC balances stored in the blockchain, therefore it has to be called inside a transaction.
Calling a smart contract function requires some extra steps, but it is not too difficult. First, we need to find the full interface of the function we’d like to call, also known as the function signature or the function prototype. Look for gimmeSome again in the contract source code and you will find that the interface is the following:
function gimmeSome() external
It is a really simple function that does not take in any arguments, and it is marked as external, which means that this function can only be called from outside, and not from other functions within this contract. That is OK because we will be calling this function directly in a transaction.
ℹ️ The gimmeSome function does not exist in the “real” USDC contract deployed on the main Ethereum network, for obvious reasons.
Create a new file called getTestnetUSDC.js in the src folder and enter the following code:
The code first instantiates a contract object (new ethers.Contract) with the interface of the function we are interested in, gimmeSome, and points it at the address of the testnet USDC contract: 0x68ec⋯69c4. You can then call any of the functions you’ve listed. gimmeSome function does not take in any arguments on its own, but you can specify transaction options as the last argument. In this case, we are giving it 20 Gwei of gas price, which should speed up the transaction. All methods that interact with the network are asynchronous in nature and return a Promise, so we are using JavaScript’s await expression. The code then prints the transaction hash, which is a unique identifier of your transaction that can be used to track the progress. It then waits until the transaction is confirmed.
Run the code, and you will see something like the following:
$ node src/getTestnetUSDC.js
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Transaction hash: 0xd8b4b06c19f5d1393f29b408fc0065d0774ec3b4d11d41be9fd72a8d84cb6208
Transaction confirmed in block 8156350
Gas used: 35121Voilà! You’ve made your first Ethereum transaction with code! Check your address and the transaction hash in Ropsten Etherscan. You should now see that you now have 10 testnet USDC, and a little less than 1 ETH, due to the gas paid to execute the transaction.
ℹ️ If you inspect the transaction in Etherscan, you will find that it is a transaction that sends zero (0) ETH to the contract address along with 4 bytes of data. If the function call had arguments, there would be more than just 4 bytes of data. If you want to learn about how this data is encoded, read the Ethereum contract ABI specification.
Gas, Gas Price and Gas Limit
Earlier, I mentioned that we are giving the transaction 20 Gwei of gas price to speed up the transaction and the script also prints the amount of gas used. What do all these things mean? Well, Ethereum is a network comprised of network operators. Think of it as a world computer. It is not a free computer though, and every instruction you run on this computer costs money. This computer is also shared by everyone around the world, which means everyone must compete with each other to get their time on this computer.
How do we make this fair? Well, we can auction off time on this computer, and the more you are willing to pay for each compute instruction you run on this computer, the more the network operators (miners) will likely be giving you the time. This sure isn’t perfect, as it could have an effect where only the rich are able to have the privilege of using this system. However it is the least bad solution we have until the system is made much more scalable and can accommodate much more transactions.
Coming back to the blockchain jargon, the “gas used” is the amount of computing resources you’ve consumed as a result of running the transaction and the “gas price” is how much you are willing to pay per unit of gas. In general, the higher you are willing to pay, the higher priority your transaction will have, and the faster it will be confirmed by the network. In our case, we used 20 Gwei as the gas price, and the gas used was 35,121 (you can also find this by inspecting the transaction in Etherscan), so the total gas cost is 35,121 * 20 Gwei = 702,420 Gwei or 0.00070242 ETH.
Since gas costs money, you might want to set an upper limit of the maximum gas you are willing to spend. Luckily, you can set a “gas limit”. If the transaction ends up needing more gas than the gas limit specified, the transaction will fail instead of continuing with the execution and consuming more gas than you’re willing to pay. One side effect to be mindful of is that if the execution ends up failing due to the limit, the amount of gas already spent will not be refunded back to you.
Calling a Smart Contract Function to Read Data
You were able to check that you received 10 USDC on Etherscan, but let’s confirm that by checking the balance with code.
Let’s modify the existing file getBalance.js in the src folder, with the following content:
USDC is an ERC20 token, so it contains all of the methods defined in the ERC20 specification. balanceOf is one of them, and its interface is taken straight from the spec. balanceOf is a read-only function, so it can be called for free and does not need to be submitted as a transaction. Finally, it is important to note that USDC uses 6 decimal places of precision as opposed to 18 that many other ERC20 tokens use.
ℹ️ You can learn more about Solidity functions here.
Run the code, and now you will see USDC balance as well:
$ node src/getBalance.js
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
ETH Balance: 0.9961879
USDC Balance: 10.0Transferring ETH and USDC
Now let’s check out how we can spend ETH and USDC we have in our account.
Transferring ETH
Create transferETH.js in the src folder and enter the following code:
This code, while lengthier than the previous ones, is really just a combination of everything you’ve learned so far. This script takes in two command line arguments. The first one is the recipient address, and the second is the amount to send. It then ensures that the address provided is valid, the amount provided is not negative and that the account has enough balance to be able to send the amount requested. It then submits the transaction and waits for it to be confirmed.
Create a new account using the createWallet.js script we created earlier, and try sending money to the new address:
$ node src/createWallet.js
Mnemonic: napkin invite special reform cheese hunt refuse ketchup arena bag love caution
Address: 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13$ node src/transferETH.js 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13 0.1
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Transferring 0.1 ETH to 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13...
Transaction hash: 0xa9f159fa8a9509ec8f8afa8ebb1131c3952cb3b2526471605fd84e8be408cebf
Transaction confirmed in block 8162896You can verify the result in Etherscan. Let’s also test that the validation logic works:
$ node src/transferETH.js foo
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Invalid address: foo$ node src/transferETH.js 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13 0.1.2
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Invalid amount: 0.1.2$ node src/transferETH.js 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13 -0.1
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Invalid amount: -0.1$ node src/transferETH.js 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13 100
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Insufficient balance to send 100.0 (You have 0.89328474)Transferring USDC
You will be able to use the majority of the code for USDC. The main differences are that USDC has 6 decimal places, and that you have to use the transfer function of the ERC20 spec to perform the transaction. You also pass the arguments “to” and “value” to the transfer smart contract function, rather than the Ethereum transaction itself.
Create transferUSDC.js in the same folder and enter the following:
Try it out, it should work just as well:
$ node src/transferUSDC.js 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13 1
Address: 0xB3512cF013F71598F359bd5CA3f53C1F4260956a
Transferring 1.0 USDC to 0xDdAC089Fe56F0a9C70e6a04C74DCE52F86a91e13...
Transaction hash: 0xc1b2157a83f29d6c04f960bc49e968a0cd2ef884761af7f95cc83880631fe4af
Transaction confirmed in block 8162963Congratulations!
In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to generate an account, query balance, transfer tokens, and call smart contract functions. You might think that you still don’t know very much about crypto, but you now actually know enough to be able to build your own crypto wallet application. We’ve been writing command-line scripts to keep things simple, but how about building one with a nice web-based graphical interface for homework?
In the next part of this tutorial series, we will write our own Ethereum smart contract from scratch with Solidity and learn how you can build your own coin that is exchangeable with USDC. We’ll also be using the techniques learned today to interact with that contract. Stay tuned.
This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., or its affiliates (collectively, “Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors who may be associated persons of Coinbase and who do not represent the views, opinions and positions of Coinbase. Information is provided for general educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment or other advice on financial products. Coinbase makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability, or validity of any information on this website and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. Unless otherwise noted, all images provided herein are the property of Coinbase, and all trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Introduction to Building on DeFi with Ethereum and USDC — Part 1 was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 16, 2020Algorand (ALGO) is now available on Coinbase
Starting today, Coinbase supports Algorand (ALGO) at Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store ALGO. ALGO is available in all Coinbase-supported regions.
Algorand (ALGO)
Founded by cryptographer and Turing award winner Silvio Micali, Algorand aims to solve some of the technical barriers of existing blockchain infrastructure. In particular, the project seeks to improve decentralization, scalability and security. Launched in June 2019, Algorand provides a foundation for existing businesses and new projects to operate globally in the emerging decentralized economy. Algorand’s permissionless, pure proof-of-stake protocol supports the scale, open participation, and transaction finality required to build scalable blockchain projects.
Last August, ALGO was listed for trading on Coinbase Pro, which recently announced it will start supporting EUR and GBP trading with ALGO on July 21. ALGO is also supported by Coinbase Custody for storage and staking.
One of the most common requests we hear from customers is to be able to buy and sell more cryptocurrencies on Coinbase. We announced a new process for listing assets, designed in part to accelerate the addition of more cryptocurrencies. We are also investing in new tools to help people understand and explore cryptocurrencies. We launched informational asset pages (see ALGO here), as well as a new section of the Coinbase website to answer common questions about crypto.
Customers can sign up for a Coinbase account here to buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store ALGO today.
Algorand (ALGO) is now available on Coinbase was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
