Coinbase Launches Its Smart Wallets, Dubbing It Crypto’s ‘IPhone Moment’ – Unchained

Coinbase’s launch of smart wallets, which don’t require initial phrases or downloading a browser extension or app, aims to help bring a billion users onto the chain.

On Wednesday, cryptocurrency heavyweight Coinbase announced the rollout of its smart wallets, which it’s calling the web3’s “iPhone moment” to tap into the chain’s more than one billion users, said Luke Youngblood, the lending app’s founder in Base Moonwell in an interview with Unchained.

Instead of using a traditional wallet usually in the form of an app or browser extension that relies on passwords, third-party installations, or seed phrases to recover one’s private key, users can use smart wallets that derive security from keys of passage.

A traditional wallet depends on a private key to sign, while smart wallets use passkeys that often depend on biometric identification to sign transactions, such as facial recognition or a fingerprint. The rollout of smart wallets is a move expected to simplify the sign-in experience of new users who are not crypto-natives.

“Onchain app developers today lose many of their many new users during the onboarding process when they leave the app to install and fund a separate wallet,” Coinbase senior director of product management Sid wrote in the announcement. Coelho-Prabhu.

Read more: Volume of Bitcoin and Ether on Exchanges Hits Multi-Year Record Highs

Smart wallets enable people without a crypto wallet to quickly get one and jump into using an app. As part of the effort to bring more users to the chain, Base is also providing gas credits to help developers sponsor their app users’ transactions. Of the several ways to earn gas credits, one way a developer can get $15,000 in sponsored gas, according to Moonwell’s Youngblood, is by placing a “Create Wallet” button in their app.

Alternatively, to earn $1,000 in sponsored gas, a developer can release a demo of their Coinbase Smart wallet integration, according to the information platform. smartwallet.dev.

“When the iPhone launched in the 2000s and 2010s, it took off. Suddenly, anyone can use apps without having to buy a computer,” added Youngblood, “We think this will bridge the gap from DeFi and onchain finance being this particular tool only usable by wealthy people in developed countries like. ours for broad general adoption.”

New login mechanism

Passkeys were developed by Apple, Google Microsoft and the FIDO Alliance to act as a new login method.

“Keys are generated on your device and are not shared or stored on any server, according to a Coinbase blog post“The public key is stored securely on Coinbase’s servers, while the private key is stored securely on your device, protected by your device’s original authentication method, such as biometrics (eg Face ID or fingerprints) fingerprints) or a PIN.”

Read more: Rapid Growth of Aerodrome – In Crypto Only a Project Can Become a $580 Million Exchange in Just 7 Months

The announcement comes as a different Coinbase initiative is attracting considerable attention among those in the crypto ecosystem, namely its Layer 2 Blockchain Foundation, which has passed 10 million users in total in less than a year since launch and nearly 321,000 daily users with an average of seven days as of Tuesday. Despite rapid growth, Base’s total number of users is still a fraction of Coinbase’s 110 million.

Moonwell, the fourth largest protocol in Base with a total blocked value of almost 95 million dollarsis a day-one launch partner of Coinbase’s smart wallets, meaning users who already have smart wallets can interact with Moonwell onchain without paying gas fees on Wednesday.

Coinbase smart wallets are supported on a number of blockchain networks such as Base, Arbitrum and Avalanche. While the Ethereum base layer is also supported, it is “not preferred for use, due to the cost of gas,” according to one website. dedicated to smart wallets.