Coinbase publishes: The era of smart wallets has arrived

Author: Coinbase; Translation: 0xjs@黄金财经

At Coinbase, we have always envisioned a world where everyone can seamlessly participate in on-chain transactions. On June 5, 2024, Coinbase will launch a new generation of self-custodial wallets. Smart Wallets are a revolutionary step in achieving the mission of bringing more than 1 billion users to on-chain transactions. These next-generation wallets solve the biggest pain points of today's crypto experience - complex onboarding, network fees, and recovery mnemonics - making the transition to on-chain transactions smoother than ever before.  

Smart Wallets provide a simplified, gas-free on-chain experience. This simplicity, coupled with multi-chain support and integration with major applications, will make joining the blockchain as easy as logging into your favorite website. Until now, on-chain has been slow, expensive, and difficult, requiring the separate installation of wallet applications and first-generation blockchains. Smart Wallets are easy to use, and combined with next-generation 2-layer networks such as Base, they ultimately lay the foundation for more people to go on-chain. Now, on-chain is simple, fast, and cheap.

For existing Coinbase Wallet users, we will be building migration tools and supporting Smart Wallets within the Coinbase Wallet app in the coming months.

Smart Wallets make on-chain easy

Smart Wallets allow users to create a free, secure, self-custodial wallet in just seconds. They simplify the onboarding process, reduce the number of transactions that need to be signed, and let users seamlessly use Coinbase balances on-chain. No more topping up wallets to pay gas fees or struggling with porting across applications. With Smart Wallets, new users can mint NFTs, trade on decentralized exchanges, or diversify their investments using DeFi applications in just a few clicks. Users can enjoy a smooth and intuitive experience without sacrificing self-custody or security.

Some of the key benefits of Coinbase Smart Wallet include:

• Easy to get started: Create a new wallet and get started in seconds without leaving the app you want to use and without using a recovery phrase, app, or extension. Use Face ID, your Google Chrome profile, fingerprint, or Yubikey to get started instantly.

• Easy on-chain payments: Pay with your self-hosted wallet balance or Coinbase account balance and say goodbye to "insufficient balance" errors.

• Cross-application portability: Bring your wallet, identity, and balance to thousands of popular on-chain applications.

• No Gas Payments: Developers can choose to offer their customers a gas-free experience and sponsored transactions through payer integrations.  

In addition, Coinbase offers a companion web app that includes features such as asset and identity management, buy, send, exchange, NFTs, and transaction history, and will serve as the primary platform for Smart Wallet users to manage their wallets.

Smart Wallet will support most leading on-chain applications at launch, with more to come. Smart Wallet will support 8 networks (Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, Zora), with the goal of adding more support in the future.  

Developers: Integrate Smart Wallet into your application for faster onboarding 

Today, Onchain application developers lose many new users during the onboarding process because they leave the application to install and fund a separate wallet. Smart Wallet is accessible directly from any browser, without the need to install an application or extension. Other important improvements include sponsored gas through payers, batched transactions, and spending directly from Coinbase accounts. We are pioneering new industry standards to enable direct communication between applications and wallets, facilitate the use of payers, and support batched transactions without the need for API integration (EIP-5792). We expect this powerful set of features to significantly change conversion rates. Coinbase's Smart Wallet is now live, and we encourage developers to integrate or update their SDKs immediately to provide users with a superior on-chain experience. In addition, integrating Smart Wallet is very simple and only requires a few lines of code at most. Smart Wallet is already integrated in all popular wallet libraries and aggregators, including WAGMI, Web3Modal, Privy, Dynamic, and Rainbowkit. Developers can update their existing Coinbase Wallet SDK, ensuring minimal disruption and a smooth transition.  

There are several compelling reasons for developers to integrate or upgrade to the Smart Wallet at this time:  

• Eligibility for Base Gas Credits: Developers can earn up to $15,000 in gas credits through the Base Gas Free campaign to sponsor their users’ transactions at zero cost.  

• Win ETH on Base by participating in the Base Buildathon: Participating in the Base Buildathon provides developers with the opportunity to win ETH on Base across 8 different tracks. An additional 40 ETH bounty pool will be available upon successful integration of Smart Wallet and other Coinbase features.  

• Participate in Onchain Summer: By integrating Smart Wallet, developers can showcase their projects during Onchain Summer, gain visibility, and attract a wider user base.

What’s Next

Coinbase’s Smart Wallet represents a major leap forward in the self-custody and on-chain trading space. By solving the major issues of traditional self-custody wallets and providing a seamless, secure, and user-friendly experience, Smart Wallet has the potential to change the way we interact on-chain. We’re excited for developers and users to take advantage of this groundbreaking new solution, and we believe that simplifying the onboarding experience will lead to widespread adoption.