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Posted on September 17, 2020Uniswap (UNI) is now available on Coinbase
Starting today, Coinbase supports Uniswap (UNI) at Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store UNI. UNI is available in all Coinbase-supported regions, with the exception of New York State.
Uniswap (UNI)
Uniswap (UNI) is a token used for governance actions in the Uniswap protocol, a decentralized automated liquidity protocol built on Ethereum. Uniswap empowers developers, liquidity providers and traders to participate in a financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all.
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 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 UNI 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 UNI today.
Coinbase holds UNI tokens and an equity interest in Universal Navigation Inc. (the company developing the Uniswap platform). Coinbase intends to maintain its investment in UNI for the foreseeable future and maintains internal policies that address the timing of permissible disposition of its digital assets, including UNI tokens.
Uniswap (UNI) 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.
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Posted on September 17, 2020Meet the Coinbase Crypterns who are building the future of money
At Coinbase, we believe that the best people to help us create the future of finance are the ones who will be the most affected: young people like our college Crypterns.
Whether it is a remote or an in-person crypternship experience, our Coinbase interns develop & ship high-priority projects over the course of their 12–16 weeks. Here are some of their stories:
Gerald Nash — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer & Security Team Tell us about yourself?
I’m a senior currently studying Computer Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. I’m from the beautiful city of Atlanta, Georgia, and I enjoy learning new languages and exploring creative and useful ways that we can interact with technology. I’ve also had two Crypternships!
What projects did you work on during your crypternship?
For my first crypternship, I worked on an update to a consumer web application workflow to help ensure user transactions did not exceed their available balances. For my second, I helped design and implement a tool that regularly executed the in-house security scanner on a variety of internal software projects, which ultimately enables the security team to more reliably find vulnerabilities that may not be found as quickly otherwise.
What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?
I learned the importance of pacing and communication. When tasked with large projects, it’s important that you keep in mind the size and scope of your work so that you can plan what needs to be done accordingly. Doing this gives insight into how much work needs to be done during each work cycle (often a sprint). And, as you complete your work, it’s important that you communicate effectively with your manager and teammates regarding any wins that you’ve seen in addition to any newly found problems that could warrant future changes to your working pace or the project overall.
Samira Gadri — Software Engineer Cryptern, Commerce Team Tell us about yourself?
Hey! I’m Samira. I go to the University of British Columbia and I study Political Science and Computer Science. I was born in Afghanistan, but I have grown up in Vancouver, Canada, and call it home. I am really passionate about harnessing the power of software to give back and make a positive difference in the world.
What made you decide to apply to the Crypternship program?
I actually didn’t know a lot about Coinbase and cryptocurrencies prior to applying and working at Coinbase. I applied for the internship program because the mission described in the job posting, increasing economic freedom around the world, resonated with me. Working for a company that is actively working toward a common good is a huge factor in motivation and job satisfaction for me.
“Working for a company that is actively working toward a common good is a huge factor in motivation and job satisfaction for me.”
What projects did you work on during your crypternship?
During my 12-week internship, I was kept busy with plenty of things to work on. By the end of it, my Github stats said I merged 44+ pull requests into production. The first project I jumped on was a major team project for Coinbase Commerce. I implemented a lot of frontend bug fixes to help the team launch the feature. Afterwards, I was the feature lead for implementing an important requested feature to allow merchants to download all of their withdrawals and refunds data in a CSV format. I was able to scope it out, implement it and launch it before the tax deadline at the time. Finally, I was the feature lead on implementing a pay with Coinbase option on donation checkouts. Previously, Coinbase Commerce only had the option to pay with Coinbase for product checkouts that had a fixed price. I was able to come up with a way to get accurate exchange rates for dynamic user donation input and integrate it into the OAuth flow. I was also able to launch this feature before the end of my internship. Check it out here.
Sowmiya Subramaniyan — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer Team Tell us about yourself and why you chose to apply to Coinbase’s Crypternship Program?
I’m a Computer Science grad student at New York University, passionate about software development. I found out about Coinbase’s internship program when I was looking online for internships in the cryptocurrency and fintech space. I’d heard from previous interns that they’d had a great experience, and that got me interested in applying.
What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?
One thing I realized during my Crypternship is how crucial communication is in the professional world. Being able to effectively communicate progress updates and blockers in team meetings is very important for working efficiently. I also learnt how a real-world large-scale application works, and unlike in school where you work on ideal environments, things can go wrong sometimes. Learning how to quickly diagnose and recover from these errors in real time is a great software engineering skill that I gained.
Would you recommend the crypternship program?
Yes, definitely! Through the Crypternship program, you get excellent mentorship and guidance on improving your skills as a software engineer and get to work on impactful projects. Crypto as a tech domain is just emerging and is a very exciting space to be in — you can learn a lot about this space through the program.
“Crypto as a tech domain is just emerging and is a very exciting space to be in — you can learn a lot about this space through the program.”
June Xu — Software Engineer Cryptern, Custody Team What projects did you work on during your crypternship?
I was lucky to have the opportunity to work on a cross-functional project for my internship that involved directly contributing to one of Coinbase’s Q1 objectives and key results (OKRs). During my time, Coinbase was trying to transition to using more shared services. This transition included migrating all Coinbase products (Consumer, Custody, Pro) to use a unified ledger for computing balance. I had complete ownership over Custody’s transition to this ledger.
Throughout the project, I was able to work with multiple teams, spanning the Payments, Infrastructure, Consumer and Data teams. I set up and attended meetings on behalf of my project, communicated progress to various stakeholders, and also got to work with another awesome teammate near the end of the project to push it to the finish line.
At every step of the way during my internship, I was given the responsibility to do work that made a meaningful contribution to the company. My work felt like it was important to the company’s success. My teammates trusted me to complete my work, and always provided me with support if I needed it.
I’m super thankful for the entire Custody team and Coinbase for making this internship experience worth HODL-ing onto.
Natalie Pekker — Software Engineer, Cryptern Alumni Can you tell us about your Coinbase Crypternship experience?
As an intern, I got to work on real projects with impact, and I was treated like a real employee in a lot of ways. People who joined my team after I started sometimes didn’t even realize I was an intern for weeks. It was an authentic taste of what it would be like to work at Coinbase full-time after college. One of the most important things for me in my career is feeling challenged by the work I do in a way that helps me grow (while also not worrying about burnout), and after my internship, I knew that Coinbase was the right place for me.
“People who joined my team after I started sometimes didn’t even realize I was an intern for weeks.”
I loved my internship not only because of the work I got to do and the mentorship I received, but also because of the friendships I made. For example, my intern class got really close — we would get dinner together at the office almost every day. The number of interns from my class (roughly half) who returned to Coinbase full-time is a huge testament to the quality of the internship. We remain close to this day, and having them around made the transition to post-grad life a lot less daunting.
Allie Ilijevski — Compliance Cryptern Tell us about yourself?
I am a first generation American, college, and law student based in Chicago, Illinois! I speak fluent Macedonian and have two little sisters with a huge age gap (16 years). I currently focus on business and compliance law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and intend to start my career in compliance.
What made you decide to apply to the Crypternship program?
I initially learned about Coinbase during my senior year at the University of Houston. A bunch of my college friends were extremely hyped up about what was then considered to be this crazy concept of “crypto.” Before I applied to the Crypternship program, I did my own research about Coinbase’s mission, vision, and strategy and found that they perfectly aligned with my career aspirations. Coinbase is also known across the crypto world as being the pioneer in its field, and who wouldn’t want to work for a company that is such a powerhouse!
Vrushabh Jambhulkar — Software Engineer Cryptern, Consumer Team What was the highlight of your Cryptern experience?
Oh boy, where do I start? My internship at Coinbase was such a wonderful learning experience. Even though my internship was completely remote, my team and the university recruitment team never made me feel that way. I gained a lot of professional experience working with my team especially from my mentor and my manager. Their guidance helped me to write high quality, well-tested code. Apart from the technical experience I have received during my internship, I learned a lot of non-technical skills as well. I understood that although planning and preparation may not be fun, it plays a very important role as well, like writing a well laid out technical document/plan. I also improved my communication skills and was able to communicate with all the stakeholders for the project. I feel like I have grown a lot in my professional career and am a lot more confident to work in the industry. All in all, it was awesome working at Coinbase and I can’t wait to get back to work again with the team.
Would you recommend our program?
Absolutely. The Coinbase internship program is a very rewarding experience for both the interns and the company. We get to work on real problems that directly impact the customers. And working under so many talented people in the industry you learn much more than just technical knowledge. Everyone is very welcoming and helpful; they will make sure that you are getting every resource that is required for you to learn and grow in your career. They will push you to do things that are outside your comfort zone, for example when my manager noticed that I have not been very prompt in communicating with the project channel with updates, he urged me to send out updates every week so I could improve upon my communication skills, which sure did help me to a great extent and it also helped me become more social with people. Coinbase has an awesome university recruitment team that makes sure you are never overwhelmed with work, and they organized so many fun events/workshops like my favorite pizza making workshop, terrarium building workshop, and many more. I highly recommend this program to everyone.
Namita Nair — Software Engineer Cryptern, Security Team What did you learn about the working world during your Crypternship?
I learned that effective communication is essential while working in a team, and we should always have a mindset of “continuous learning” . Coding is often the easiest part, the important part is defining the project scope and requirements perfectly. Documentation is equally important as coding.
What was most rewarding about your Crypternship? What was most challenging?
The most rewarding part was being able to talk to and work with brilliant and motivated people. I was able to work in a company culture that aligned with my values. I felt my work as an intern was valuable — my code shipped to production. The challenging aspects would be the steep learning curve, compounded by the fact that the internship was remote. I had to learn Golang, working in a MonoRepo, AWS Lambda functions on the job. I learned “how to learn,” and asking for help when stuck was encouraged, so I was able to remain productive throughout.
Want to help us build the future of money? Join our team as a Cryptern or UniGrad: See open positions
Meet the Coinbase Crypterns who are building the future of money 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 September 17, 2020Loopring (LRC) and yearn.finance (YFI) are now available on Coinbase
Starting today, Coinbase supports Loopring (LRC) and yearn.finance (YFI) at Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store LRC and YFI. LRC and YFI are available in all Coinbase-supported regions, with the exception of New York State.
Loopring (LRC)
Loopring (LRC) is an Ethereum token that describes itself as “an open-sourced, audited, and non-custodial exchange protocol.” It aims to allow anyone to build non-custodial, orderbook-based exchanges on Ethereum by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs.
yearn.finance (YFI)
yearn.finance (YFI) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, which aims to perform a host of functions such as aggregated liquidity and automated market making by moving providers’ funds between platforms such as dYdX, Aave, and Compound. YFI is the native token in the yearn.finance platform. Users can earn it by contributing liquidity to yearn.finance’s liquidity pool and use the token for platform governance.
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 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 LRC here and YFI 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 LRC and YFI today.
Loopring (LRC) and yearn.finance (YFI) are 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.
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Posted on September 17, 2020Uniswap (UNI) is launching on Coinbase Pro
Starting immediately, transfer UNI into your Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Support for UNI will be available in all Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State.
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 trading support for yearn.finance (YFI), Loopring (LRC), UMA (UMA), Celo (CGLD), Numeraire (NMR), Band (BAND), 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.
Starting immediately, we will begin accepting inbound transfers of UNI to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on Thursday, September 17, if liquidity conditions are met. Updates will be made from our Coinbase Pro Twitter account.
Once sufficient supply of UNI is established on the platform, trading on our UNI-USD order book will launch in three phases, 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.
Uniswap (UNI) is a token used for governance actions in the Uniswap protocol, a decentralized automated liquidity protocol built on Ethereum. Uniswap empowers developers, liquidity providers and traders to participate in a financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all.
Please note that UNI 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 UNI on Coinbase Pro, visit our support page.
Coinbase holds UNI tokens and an equity interest in Universal Navigation Inc. (the company developing the Uniswap platform). Coinbase intends to maintain its investment in UNI for the foreseeable future and maintains internal policies that address the timing of permissible disposition of its digital assets, including UNI tokens.
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Uniswap (UNI) 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 September 16, 2020Celebrating USDC at $2 billion: A Request for Startups
By Raj Jain, Head of Stablecoin
USD Coin, the world’s leading fully-backed, regulated stablecoin, recently reached $2 billion in market cap. To celebrate this major milestone, we’re issuing a Request for Startups. Join us in creating an open financial system with greater access and inclusion for all.
Just two months ago, in July, USD Coin (USDC) achieved its biggest milestone to-date, crossing $1 billion in total market cap. Occurring only 21 months after it was initially launched in late 2018, this represented a significant accomplishment, solidifying USDC as the leading fully-backed, regulated digital dollar. Now, only two short months later, USDC’s market cap has doubled to reach $2 billion.
Stablecoins are one of the most promising vehicles for creating greater financial access and inclusion. Coinbase was founded with the mission of creating an open financial system for the world, but we can’t do it ourselves. In celebration of USDC’s tremendous growth, and the rapid rise of stablecoins as an important crypto innovation, we’re issuing a Request for Startups. Coinbase Ventures and the USDC Bootstrap Fund are excited to fund and work with promising startups and with developers building decentralized protocols that advance our mission.
If you’re an entrepreneur working on a stablecoin-based idea, we want to hear from you. We’ve outlined some ideas that we’re especially excited about below, but good ideas come from anywhere. If you’re working on a problem that isn’t on this list, reach out anyway!
Banking the unbanked
Access to financial services is critical to creating and maintaining wealth, and those without access suffer from a systemic inequality that creates widening disparity between them and the rest of society. In 2018, the Federal Reserve estimated that there are 55 million unbanked or underbanked adult Americans, accounting for 22% of U.S. households. According to the World Bank, 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked worldwide, and yet two-thirds of those adults own a mobile phone.
A truly open financial system can’t leave the unbanked and underbanked behind. Crypto allows people to save money and participate in activities like investing or borrowing with nothing more than a smartphone. And stablecoins in particular bring the benefits of crypto to those who might not be in a position to navigate the volatility of other cryptocurrencies. Combined with access to the internet, stablecoins will play a key early role in making it easier for people to participate as equals in the global financial system. We’d love to see solutions that could help make this happen.
Wealth preservation
The most economically marginalized tend to live in countries with the most unstable financial systems and the most inflationary currencies. If you’re stuck holding whatever wealth you have in a currency that rapidly loses its worth, the struggle to survive, compete, and thrive with the rest of the world becomes even harder. Even if you aren’t on the fringes, economic stability still matters. USDC gives people around the world easier access to the stability of the US dollar.
Stablecoins built on crypto rails make it easier to access other asset types regardless of where you live, but end-to-end solutions connecting local fiat and crypto are important in order to easily convert back and forth whenever necessary. We’re interested in seeing companies that are solving this problem.
Global payments
Global remittances represent $600 billion in annual peer-to-peer payments (though the World Bank expects Covid-19 to cause a reduction in near-term volumes). Roughly 75% of remittance volume is used to cover everyday expenses, with the remaining 25% used for investing and asset-building. Two key problems plague remittances today: 1) They can be slow due to a lack of global standards and payment rails that are optimized for local laws and banking structures; and, 2) They can be incredibly expensive, with fees as high as 15% for certain corridors.
International payment rails also underpin global business activity, and businesses face similar challenges around speed and cost. Rails optimized for local infrastructure, rather than global interoperability, limit the efficiency with which businesses can transact, both with other businesses and with individuals. Days-long settlement times lock up funds, limit liquidity, and complicate treasury management for companies trying to move fast.
One of the early promises of crypto was revolutionizing global payment flows, but that hasn’t happened yet. We’re interested in seeing how stablecoins can be used to help people send money to friends and family abroad who need help, as well as power a more efficient global payments system for business.
Financial services for crypto companies
Crypto companies have to solve many of the same problems that non-crypto companies face in the course of running their businesses: securing & growing their assets, filing & paying taxes, handling payroll for employees, paying vendors, and more. But, unlike other companies, crypto businesses have a tougher time getting access to financial resources themselves. Traditional financial institutions, including banks, are still learning about crypto and the unique risks that companies in the space can face.
If we want to connect and grow the cryptoeconomy, and ultimately create a more open financial system, we need to make it safer and easier for crypto entrepreneurs to start and operate companies.
Tools for crypto developers
Our strategy at Coinbase involves connecting and growing the cryptoeconomy, and we’re excited to see so many innovative new companies and protocols emerging. But building those companies and protocols still requires crypto developers to handle significant overhead because they don’t yet have a complete set of tools to facilitate application-building.
We want to make it easier for developers to create new crypto-based products and services, especially those that accelerate the adoption of stablecoins around the world. There are several key problems that need solving: 1) Infrastructure and tooling to make it easier to create and operate new protocols; 2) Custody-as-a-service so developers can focus on solving use cases, not managing storage (think Parse for crypto); and, 3) Global, inexpensive on-and-off ramps so people and businesses can easily move between fiat and crypto with KYC that respects local regulation. Crypto developers have other needs too, and we’d love to work with companies that are helping create the foundation to connect and grow the cryptoeconomy.
If you’re an entrepreneur tackling one of these problems, or are working on another big idea that we left off this list, and you’d like to work with us, reach out to our Coinbase Ventures team here. If you’re working on a new decentralized protocol that needs USDC liquidity, our USDC Bootstrap Fund may be able to help — you can apply here.
More about USDC
USDC was introduced by the Centre Consortium, an organization co-founded by Coinbase and Circle, in order to establish an open standard for fiat on the internet and provide a governance framework and network for the global, mainstream adoption of fiat-backed stablecoins.
Want to get your own USDC? It’s easy.
Celebrating USDC at $2 billion: A Request for Startups 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 September 13, 2020Six months in: Scaling lessons from my first 180 days
By Surojit Chatterjee, Chief Product Officer
Some people say you should measure time in a startup in terms of dog years — every year is like seven normal years. By that measure, I’ve already spent in Coinbase almost as much time I spent at my last role at Google. And it has been a crazy six months — crazy fun, crazy exciting and crazy full of learnings in scaling and growing a company. Of course, the insanity was multiplied a hundred times by the fact that we are also going through an unprecedented global pandemic.
What comes with challenges is growth and understanding. What have I come away with from these first six months? Below are six key themes.
And if you are interested in joining a fast-growing company solving important problems, Coinbase is hiring.
Every crisis can be an opportunity
We’ve grown our product, design and engineering teams by more than 50% over the last three months. We were one of the first companies to go “remote first” which widened the pool of candidates we could hire — instead of just from in and around SFO, we’re now hiring anyone across the U.S. Also, surprise-surprise, cutting travel time out seems to save everyone time! It has been much easier to find a quick 30 minutes in a day’s schedule to interview rather than travel for a few hours and block the calendar for half a day.
While hiring at such a rapid pace the big questions in my mind have been: 1) are we hiring the right people? and 2) how do we maintain and grow our culture? One of the big changes we made was to hire for #onecoinbase. This means we don’t hire for specific teams, but rather we hire product managers who are at the top of their game and can take on any challenge. There has been some skepticism about this approach. But we found that hiring great people who can quickly learn new things often trumps hiring those with deep domain knowledge but limited potential for flexibility. The opportunity in the crypto space is constantly evolving and we need great entrepreneurs and builders (see Brian’s more detailed blog post on who should join Coinbase?) in our product and design teams.
Focus on the most important things
Just a few weeks ago we had evacuation fears here in the Bay Area because of the wild fires. This is the first time in my life that I had to figure out if I could only take only a few things from my carefully curated house, what would I take? In other words, what are my priorities? In a space like crypto, new and interesting projects and ideas come up every single week. There is a huge risk with responding to every external stimulus and remaining in a constant reactive mode. One of the pleasant surprises for me at Coinbase was to learn how rigorous the company was in terms of creating quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). But OKRs are not useful if you have tens of P0s (top priority issues) and hundreds of P1s. We started asking our product managers to strictly stack rank their priorities during quarterly meetings. Stack ranking does not mean we only do one thing, but it helps create clarity and makes decision making easier when it comes to allocating resources.
…While planting seeds for the future
When you commit to achieving something revolutionary like creating economic freedom for the world, which is our vision at Coinbase, the length and breadth of vision can be daunting. We strongly believe that the way to achieve more economic freedom for everyone is to create an open financial system on top of crypto. These are ambitious goals and the exact steps to reach these are not all completely defined. We are on a multi-decade journey towards this goal. And when we reach it we’ll be disrupting all of finance as we know it today.
Disruption can only come from breakthrough innovation and for breakthrough innovation you’ve got to plant many seeds and not just tolerate, but celebrate failure. That is why we follow a 70/20/10 allocation model to help plant the seeds for the future. We call it Core (70%), Strategic (20%) and Venture (10%). There have often been internal requests to reallocate our 10 or 20 percent efforts to the top ranked 70 percent. This confusion isn’t something unique to Coinbase, or even a smaller start-up. This is a perennial confusion in many tech companies. Prioritization does not mean killing all high beta efforts, it means allocating the right amount of resources to each type of effort. Innovation is a core part of the career framework for our product team at Coinbase. In fact, we expect and encourage our senior staff to step out of their comfort zone and incubate more zero to one projects. No idea is too radical!
Connecting the dots
As the company scales, it becomes even more important to create harmony between OKRs of different teams. While the teams can choose their routes, they need to all be driving to the same destination. In other words, all teams need to be aligned to a few critical, top level strategic directions. That’s where Company Level OKRs become important — to me these should reflect company strategy and should not be changing every quarter. Specific KRs or metric goals may change, but the overall objective should have some longevity. Company Level OKRs help give teams the necessary context to come up with their own OKRs. These are often not set “top down”, but sourced from the team. It is really important for every team to clearly understand overall product strategy and connect the dots between their team goals and company goals.
Details matter! Empathy matters more!
Sometimes it is easy to get carried away with the big picture vision and mission at the cost of everyday great execution. I always look for creating a flow or rhythm. Rhythm is broken when teams lose perspective and end up prioritizing their own interest over the company’s interest. When collaboration is broken and teams don’t deal with conflict, and instead play passive aggressive, it can require a spidey sense to sniff out the real source of the issue. Sometimes it comes down to placating a single offended employee hurt by an offhand email from someone on their team or a misinterpreted Slack post, or a comment made during calibration or at a promo panel. The details matter!. Life often throws us curveballs, but with something like COVID-19, we saw the number of individuals going through extremely stressful situations in their own personal lives quickly multiply. Understanding these situations and helping out (sometimes just by listening) is critical to get the rhythm of execution back on track. Remember details matter, empathy matters more! It, sometimes, matters most!
Sometimes I was wrong and that was a very good thing!
We all approach a problem with our own individual set of beliefs and experiences. Sometimes our experiences help us quickly connect the dots and come up with an intuitive solution faster, while other times it can hold us back. Being wrong is not wrong, being unable to admit you are wrong is the real obstacle to progress. For example, I had some early doubts about how fast Decentralized Finance or DeFi would grow only to see in a few months that DeFi has completely exploded. One of our maverick PMs had a strong conviction and had his team continue to build out gateways into the DeFi ecosystem. This is the culture we hope to build and foster at Coinbase, where teams can try out radical new ideas and they don’t need to wait for top down approval for every single step.
It has certainly been a busy six months, but I’ve never been more excited about the opportunity ahead for me and my teams. Creating an open financial system for the world is a bold objective and getting there will be long journey. If you’re interested in helping us — we’re hiring.
Six months in: Scaling lessons from my first 180 days 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 September 10, 2020Lessons from training teams to use React Native
By Harry Tormey
Since its founding in 2012, Coinbase has grown to offer a diverse range of products built with a variety of different technologies. Some of these products are targeted at highly sophisticated users and some are targeted at individuals who are new to cryptocurrency.
As our products and business has evolved, so too have the technologies used to build them. Coinbase now has more than one thousand employees, and at this scale it’s important to have support for engineers who want to transition from one product to another at a fast pace.
One of the advantages of working at Coinbase is a continued emphasis on investing in our employees’ education. We do this to make it easier for employees to transition between teams and learn new technologies such as React Native.
React Native is a JavaScript framework for writing cross platform natively rendering mobile applications. At Coinbase we use React Native to build both the Coinbase Pro mobile application and our Onboarding flows. As such, we want all of our front-end engineers to have the opportunity to work on products built using this technology, even if from a different background.
Do Engineers Want This Training?
Before we decided to invest people’s time and money into developing a new training program we asked engineers at Coinbase if this was necessary or desirable.
At the end of 2019 we sent out a Google Form to gauge interest in React Native training among our engineers. Twenty seven engineers responded to this form expressing interest in training. This is a pie chart breaking down the engineering backgrounds of those who expressed an interest in React Native Training:
Based on this survey and the level of enthusiasm we decided to move forward and take the time to invest in developing a React Native Training program.
Takeaway: Use surveys to verify whether your training will meet a real need for employees.
What Goes On The Curriculum?
One of the big challenges in teaching React Native is that it covers a large surface area spanning the Javascript and native mobile ecosystems. Another challenge is that people learning about React Native for the first time come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
In order to address these issues we:
- Conducted a survey for everyone attending the classes background (web, native mobile, etc), and specific skills they would like to learn.
- Constructed a multi day class curriculum based on the survey and input from the engineering management and senior engineers.
This surveying technique allowed us to segment the class into beginner, intermediate and advanced sections and gave us the ability to make some parts of it optional (thus saving people time).
As an example, in the scenario where everyone is new to React, Javascript, and React Native, everyone would attend all of the classes. In the scenario where a mixed skill level group was being taught, the first day would cover introductory topics and would be optional.
This approach is different from the one size fits all approach taken by some companies that offer pre-packaged training.
Takeaway: Combine survey feedback with input from relevant stakeholders to construct your curriculum and segment your training.
Who Administers The Training?
Putting together and administering a multi day training program is a lot of work that usually requires the time of a more experienced engineer, so most organizations outsource this to another company.
In order to find a suitable partner to develop this training program we reached out to multiple organizations in our network that offer React Native Training packages. Of those that were contacted only two were in a position to offer onsite custom curriculums.
The search for a trainer began in January, just before the COVID-19 pandemic made international travel impossible. Our original plan was to have the trainer come onsite and teach the class in person.
The immediate impact of COVID-19 was that the training needed to be remote first and conducted by someone in the same or an adjacent time zone to our employees.
Takeaway: Do your due diligence, and interview/reference check multiple companies to find the best one that meets your training needs.
Our Choice: Devin Abbott
After reviewing multiple curriculums, interviewing different companies that offered training and checking references and taking into account the situation with COVID-19 we decided to move forward with Devin Abbott.
Devin has taught React Native workshops at Zynga, Nerdwallet, Cengage, and the React Europe conference. Here’s a video of part of Devin’s React Europe workshop so you can get a sense for his presentation style. Devin is based in the Bay Area.
Takeaway: Pick a candidate that has relevant experience, good references, and meets your criteria.
How Did We Structure The Training?
The training was structured as a three-day class where students would build an example app from the ground up with React Native, adding on to it as new topics were covered. The example app the instructor created was a minimal version of the main Coinbase app.
This style of class encourages people to build the application alongside the instructor after they have presented on a topic. Coinbase also provided teaching assistants to assist the instructor during the class.
These teaching assistants were volunteers from existing teams at Coinbase who had experience working with React Native. It should be noted that external teaching assistants would also have worked.
These teaching assistants were available in case people needed help during the class. In the event that the instructor was teaching this class in person, these teaching assistants would likely only be needed for larger classes.
The workflow for the class was as follows:
- The instructor presented on a topic for thirty minutes then set a class program challenge: i.e. build this screen or make this animation.
- Students would split into breakout groups and join a separate Google Hangout with some of their peers.
- A teaching assistant would be present in each one of these breakout sessions.
- After a set period of time students would rejoin the class and the instructor would complete the exercise.
The teaching assistants were paired with sets of students prior to the instructor coming “onsite.” Their duties included:
- Checking in with each of their students prior to the class to ensure they have the proper React Native tools installed.
- Being available to help with questions during the class in a dedicated Slack channel.
- A Google Sheet was set up listing different Google Hangout channels for each of the TA’s and their students during the breakout sessions.
- The instructor was also available to answer any questions and during the breakout sessions they would visit different hangout channels to see how people were doing.
Takeaway: Interactive workshops with breakout sessions and building something relevant alongside an instructor are vital for keeping students motivated.
How Did The Training Go?
The training ran for three days and was administered to twenty seven engineers and several engineering managers. During the day the class was asked to raise any issues in the class Slack channel or to direct message the instructor or teaching assistants. At the end of each day a Google Form was circulated to collect anonymous feedback about the day.
During the day the instructor received real-time feedback from the class via Slack. At the end of the day an anonymized summary of the feedback about the day was also given to the instructor.
Real-time feedback was very valuable. It allowed us to do things like increase the amount of time the students had for the programming breakout sessions. It also allowed us to better refine the curriculum and improve our approach to future training.
Takeaway: Make real-time feedback channels available to the class to address issues that come up during the day. Conduct a survey after each day to collect feedback to better refine the next class.
What Did We Learn?
At the end of the three day class a retrospective meeting was held with the teaching assistants. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss what happened during the class breakout sessions and the anonymized feedback from the students, with the goal of improving future sessions based on those learnings and conversations.
The conclusion was that the class went well with Devin scoring an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. The main recommendations from the retrospective were as follows:
- Refine the curriculum: The most popular part of the training was the interactive breakout sessions where students got to build the example app. Feedback from the class was to cut down on any unnecessary reviewing of developer docs and to focus more on high level system architecture and theory (i.e. what is a transpiler). Several other modules from the class that were not relevant to the students’ jobs at Coinbase were also cut.
- Increase frequency of training: Working with the instructor was an unquestionably positive experience and all of the students and teaching assistants were very happy with the experience. Going forward we hope to have the instructor return periodically to teach this class again to new Coinbase employees. In the event we decide to go forward with this we would probably dispense with teaching assistants and have the instructor teach a smaller group of eight or less people.
- Stretch out over five days with a shorter amount of time each day: Each day the classes began at ten AM and ran until five PM with periodic breaks. The feedback was that doing this all over Google Hangouts was exhausting. Our recommendation here was to make the class half a day long and stretch out the program over a longer period of time.
Takeaway: When you roll out a new training program, make sure to hold a retrospective to discuss what went well and what could be improved with the relevant stakeholders.
What’s Next?
The React Native Training program was well-received by students and we are now planning on making it a recurring program at Coinbase. If you are interested in learning about React Native or are interested in learning more about cryptocurrency, Coinbase is hiring.
Unless otherwise provided, all images herein are by Coinbase
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.
Lessons from training teams to use React Native 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 September 10, 2020yearn.finance (YFI) is launching on Coinbase Pro
On Monday, September 14, transfer YFI into your Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Support for YFI will be available in all Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. Per previous launches, transfers will open during business hours, Pacific time.
On Monday September 14, YFI entered transfer-only mode. Inbound transfers for YFI are now available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions. Traders cannot place orders and no orders will be filled. The order book will be in transfer-only mode at minimum until Tuesday, 9/15 9am PT (US business hours).
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 trading support for UMA (UMA) Celo (CGLD), Numeraire (NMR), Band (BAND), 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, September 14, we began accepting inbound transfers of YFI to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) Tuesday September 15, if liquidity conditions are met.
Once sufficient supply of YFI is established on the platform, trading on our YFI-USD order book 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.
yearn.finance (YFI) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform which aims to perform a host of functions such as aggregated liquidity and automated marketing making by moving providers’ funds between platforms such as dYdX, Aave, and Compound. YFI is the native token in the yearn.finance platform. Users can earn it by contributing liquidity to yearn.finance’s liquidity pool and use the token for platform governance.
Please note that YFI 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 YFI 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.
yearn.finance (YFI) 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 September 10, 2020UMA is now available on Coinbase
Starting today, Coinbase supports UMA (UMA) at Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store UMA. UMA is available in all Coinbase-supported regions, with the exception of New York State.
UMA (UMA)
UMA (UMA) is an Ethereum token that describes itself as “an open-source protocol that allows developers to design and create their own financial contracts and synthetic assets.” The protocol’s name comes from the team’s goal of creating universal market access (UMA).
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 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 UMA 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 UMA today.
UMA 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.
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View all news of Coinbase
Posted on September 10, 2020Loopring (LRC) is launching on Coinbase Pro
On Monday, September 14, transfer LRC into your Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Support for LRC will be available in all Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. Per previous launches, transfers will open during business hours, Pacific time.
On Monday September 14, LRC entered transfer-only mode. Inbound transfers for LRC are now available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions. Traders cannot place orders and no orders will be filled. The order book will be in transfer-only mode at minimum until Tuesday, 9/15 9am PT (US business hours).
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 UMA (UMA) Celo (CGLD), Numeraire (NMR), Band (BAND), 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, September 14, we began accepting inbound transfers of LRC to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) Tuesday September 15, if liquidity conditions are met.
Once sufficient supply of LRC is established on the platform, trading on our LRC-USD order book 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.
Loopring (LRC) is an Ethereum token that describes itself as “an open-sourced, audited, and non-custodial exchange protocol.” It aims to allow anyone to build non-custodial, orderbook-based exchanges on Ethereum by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs.
Please note that LRC 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 LRC 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.
Loopring (LRC) 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.
