Coinbase (COIN) is allowing customers to send and receive cryptocurrency beyond just Ethereum, starting with Polygon and Solana, the exchange said in a blog post on Thursday.
Coinbase says the integration will make it fast and simple for customers to convert fiat to crypto and fund their Polygon and Solana wallets. MATIC and SOL are the native assets of Polygon and Solana, respectively, but native stablecoins will also be supported.
“Over the next month, eligible Coinbase and Coinbase Exchange customers will be able to send and receive ETH, MATIC, and USDC on Polygon, and they’ll be able to send and receive USDC on Solana. Over time, we’ll add support for more tokens and more networks,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
The cost of using Ethereum is driving users towards cheaper overlay systems or alternative networks. (It can cost over $10 in gas fees to send small amounts of crypto from Coinbase exchange to a self-custodial wallet, Coinbase pointed out, and it can cost over $100 in gas to lend out larger amounts of crypto on protocols like Aave.)
The move is the latest in a series of upgrades by Coinbase, released against a backdrop of tightening competition among exchanges as bear market conditions bed in. For instance, rival exchange Binance.US recently announced zero fee bitcoin trading.
Users want to explore Web3, Coinbase said, but it’s not simple to move crypto across networks and involves messing around with blockchain bridges and the like.
“It can take approximately 20 minutes, $50 in gas, and 10 protracted steps to purchase a NFT on Polygon via OpenSea. Now, Coinbase customers can convert their fiat to ETH, MATIC, and USDC and fund their Polygon wallet at a fraction of the cost and time, making it simple to explore more of web3.”
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