Earn: a new way to access cryptocurrency
Traditionally, the two ways people have obtained cryptocurrency are through mining or buying. Mining cryptocurrency typically requires technical knowledge and high upfront costs, while buying cryptocurrency can require disposable income to exchange for cryptocurrencies.
Earning cryptocurrency is a third option. It has the potential to expand the blockchain user base from the tens of millions of people with the resources to mine or buy crypto to the billions of people who now have smartphones. This is because one can — in theory — earn crypto simply by clicking buttons on a phone or laptop.
Coinbase Earn solves many of the practical issues required to turn this theory into practice. We give verified, invited users a series of useful tasks to complete from anywhere to earn digital currency. For this first set of tasks, funding is coming from the 0x external development pool, with 100% of the funds going directly to users. In the future, we may experiment with other kinds of tasks from different types of senders, not necessarily always created by asset developers themselves. For example, there may be tasks paid in Bitcoin that aren’t sent by Satoshi Nakamoto!
We think Coinbase Earn could help open up blockchain access to a new group of users: people who are curious about digital assets, but who’d like to try them out for free just like a normal web or mobile app. By serving that need, we hope to make blockchain more accessible in the process. Please check out the Coinbase Earn page for ZRX today.