The Exchange Continues to Deepen Its Ties to Layer 2 Blockchain Optimism

Coinbase is taking a page out of Optimism’s playbook.

The United States’ largest crypto exchange on Thursday announced incentives modeled and named after Optimism’s Quests program, which sent activity on the Layer 2 blockchain to all-time highs early this year.

Coinbase Wallet users who complete certain tasks will be rewarded in crypto, the exchange announced. The first iteration of the program, dubbed “Quests on Wallet,” will encourage users to swap, delegate and stake tokens on Optimism, the second-largest Ethereum rollup. And it will reward users with $5 worth of Optimism’s governance token, OP. 

Coinbase stock and OP are down 16% and 22% over the past week, respectively, amid a broader crypto market selloff prompted by a New York Attorney General lawsuit that referred to Ether as a security. 

OP Price + COIN Price, Source: The Defiant Terminal

The move is part of a push to bring the crypto-curious “on-chain” — to encourage them to move from the more familiar world of banks and centralized exchanges, like Coinbase, to decentralized applications.

On a Twitter Space Thursday, Coinbase Wallet product lead Alex Treece noted the exchange has more than 100M verified users.

“It’s newbies, like your parents and grandparents, who may have a Coinbase account, and also very sophisticated folks,” he said. “We want to bring those folks on-chain.”

The first iteration of the program, dubbed “Quests on Wallet,” will encourage users to swap, delegate and stake tokens on Optimism, the second-largest Ethereum rollup.

It’s the latest example of a deepening relationship between the exchange and Optimism.  

Last month, Coinbase announced it was building its own rollup, Base, using Optimism code known as the “OP Stack.”

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As part of that announcement, Coinbase said it would become a contributor to the OP Stack and that it would donate a percentage of Base transaction fees to an Optimism-run grant program that funds developers working on public goods, such as upgrades to Ethereum.