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Coinbase is advancing its storage strategy for corporate and customer USD Coin (USDC) balances by leveraging Base, an Ethereum (ETH) layer 2 solution it helped develop.
Base, built upon the Optimism (OP) Stack, aims to enhance the efficiency of managing and securing funds with its open-source technology.
Max Branzburg, the Vice President and Head of Consumer Products at Coinbase, announced via X that this shift will result in lower transaction fees and quicker settlement times, all while maintaining the current user experience standards at Coinbase. Branzburg expressed enthusiasm about the company’s ongoing shift towards blockchain technology and encouraged other firms to consider similar transitions.
1/ Going forward, Coinbase is going to be storing more corporate and customer USDC balances on Base. This enables us to manage and secure customer funds with lower fees and faster settlement times, with no impact to the Coinbase user experience.
We are excited to continue to…
— Max Branzburg 🛡 (@maxbranzburg) March 26, 2024
The response from the community has been positive, with Base contributor Jesse Pollak endorsing the move and expressing eagerness to continue supporting Coinbase’s blockchain integration.
based
excited to keep supporting @coinbase moving onchain
— Jesse Pollak (jesse.xyz) 🛡️ (@jessepollak) March 26, 2024
Highlighting Base’s Growth
In related news, Base has experienced a notable increase in its total value locked (TVL), with user deposits surpassing $1 billion according to Defi Llama data. This marks a significant rise from the beginning of the month, when the TVL stood at $470 million.
A significant portion of this growth is attributed to Aerodrome, a decentralized exchange that has seen a substantial increase in activity since early February. Aerodrome is responsible for nearly $507 million of Base’s TVL — around half.
Additionally, Base has outperformed other optimistic rollup solutions in terms of transaction volume growth, even as platforms like Arbitrum also report significant increases. Conversely, the OP Mainnet has witnessed a steadier, more modest rise in daily transactions.
Coinbase launched Base back in late August 2023, as a new layer 2 scalability solution aimed at allowing large-scale decentralized application adoption. In late November 2023, Coinbase also launched its new open-source Onchain Payment Protocol — aimed at improving the company’s Commerce product for merchants.
This new protocol was pitched as a way to enable “instant settlement, low fees, and broad asset support” for merchants using its services.
