Coinbase Cloud and CoinList: supporting the growth of innovative networks

"At CoinList we believe that decentralization will transform society, much like the internet did over the past few decades. CoinList’s mission is to support the most innovative crypto projects to launch their networks, empower early adopters to participate in these protocols, and to grow the blockchain ecosystem."— Scott Keto, COO, CoinList

CoinList is a cryptocurrency exchange that provides a platform for digital asset companies to launch their tokens. It’s also a place for early adopters to access new tokens before they list on other exchanges.

Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between AngelList and Protocol Labs (the group behind Filecoin), Coinlist is a secure, compliant platform on which innovative new token projects can conduct their token sales. Filecoin was the first company on board, followed by Flow, NEAR, Solana, Algorand, and Dfinity.

In early 2020, CoinList was looking for an infrastructure provider that would enable them to offer their community a secure, seamless staking experience through their platform. After a comprehensive review process, they decided Bison Trails (now integrated into Coinbase Cloud) was the best fit, due to its technical and protocol expertise.

"CoinList engages a large number of new protocols across the industry. Without a partner like Coinbase Cloud, we would not be able to support nearly the same breadth of network participation for our customers. Their professionalism and dedication to supporting networks immediately at launch is unparalleled in the industry. They have emerged as an early leader among staking‐as‐a‐service providers.

Staking and network participation is critical to the successful growth of new blockchain networks. With the help of Coinbase Cloud, CoinList provides seamless access for users to earn protocol rewards for their network participation and at the same time improve the network security for these novel blockchains."—Scott Keto, COO, CoinList

Coinbase Cloud’s infrastructure and protocol expertise helps CoinList further empower its community to participate in innovative networks, increasing decentralization, and supports the exchange’s growth and adoption.

Helping networks grow and scale: the NuCypher Worklock

The NuCypher WorkLock is a great example of how Coinbase Cloud and CoinList collaborated to support a network through a critical growth cycle.

NuCypher enables cryptographic infrastructure for privacy‐preserving applications and secure data storage. It was designed to help data owners securely share their data with any number of users in a secure manner, using a decentralized Key Management System.

The WorkLock, which ran between September 2020 and April 2021, was an important step in the adoption and success of the NuCypher protocol. Its novel node distribution mechanism enabled participants to lock ETH to a smart contract, receive NU tokens, run NuCypher (Ursula) nodes, and receive fees and rewards. Participants could also get their ETH back after six months. 

The WorkLock was designed to get tokens into the hands of participants who would contribute useful work to the network, increase the number of nodes on NuCypher, and generally contribute to its growth and decentralization. A total of 22.5% of the initial NU supply was distributed through the WorkLock.

The CoinList community were keen to participate in NuCypher WorkLock — and Coinbase Cloud’s secure, intuitive validator infrastructure made it possible. Even non‐technical users were able to get involved.

• The NuCypher WorkLock on CoinList had nearly seven thousand registrants and almost three thousand unique participants.

• CoinList users contributed 147K ETH (≈ $54 million) of the 354K total ETH (≈ $124 million) locked up across the network — more than 40% of the total.

• NuCypher WorkLock was one of the most successful events on CoinList — both in terms of the number of unique participants and the total ETH brought to the platform.

The CoinList platform continues to grow and see adoption.

• The platform has more than 5 million users, three times the number it had in 2020.

• Between 2020 and 2021 we’ve increased our KYC-approved user base 42x globally, 36x in the European Union, and 62x in Asia. CoinList now has users across 170+ countries. 

• The number of staking users increased from around 400 in July 2020 to more than 22,000 in May 2021.

• Assets staked on CoinList have surpassed $3 billion in 2021. Users of CoinList's staking services have received over $130 million in staking awards, and eligible users can now stake new assets such as FLOW, CSPR, NU, and MINA.

Read/Write infrastructure and the security of growing networks

Empowering a secure, seamless participation and staking experience is critical to advancing CoinList’s mission of supporting innovative networks. However, companies that offer blockchain products and services also require a different type of infrastructure — read/write nodes — to accurately track and record activity that takes place on a blockchain.

Read/write nodes are critical for CoinList, as the networks they support continue to grow and scale, and the total value of assets on the platform increases. CoinList uses Coinbase Cloud Query & Transact read/write infrastructure to help verify on‐chain transactions and information for the Flow and Oasis networks. With Query & Transact, CoinList can easily track and verify their user transactions and account balances, ensuring transactions are processed and recorded accurately on the blockchains. Query & Transact also serves the data through an API, making it extremely easy for CoinList to query the information for reporting and analysis purposes.

The path forward

The crypto ecosystem is growing rapidly, with more innovative networks launching and new participants arriving every day. CoinList plays the important role of supporting both. Its platform helps accelerate new network adoption, as well as being a secure place for crypto users and enthusiasts to discover and participate in these networks. It can only fulfill this important role with solid blockchain infrastructure.

Coinbase Cloud is proud to support CoinList with secure, reliable infrastructure to help them realize their vision and advance the crypto ecosystem.