Coinbase on Monday began accepting inbound transfers of two Solana ecosystem tokens, FIDA and ORCA, confirming CoinDesk’s earlier reporting.
Announced in a tweet (per a new policy), the expansion adds SPL tokens (Solana’s ERC-20 equivalent) to Coinbase’s token menagerie for the first time. It previously stuck to layer 1 coins and tokens built atop the Ethereum blockchain.
Orca and Bonfida are decentralized exchanges for Solana-based assets, including wrapped tokens.
Already in the green for the day, ORCA rallied within minutes of Coinbase’s announcement before giving much of the gains back by press time. FIDA dropped.
Does “more tokens” mean less “Coinbase effect”? It could be a factor to consider as the publicly traded exchange executes CEO Brian Armstrong’s tweeted plans to list “every” asset where possible.
Recent reports by media organizations suggest that the US-based crypto exchange plans to allow withdrawals of Solana Program Library (SPL) tokens. SPL is Solana’s version of Ethereum’s ERC-20, the token program allows anyone to create their own mint and distribute it to users.
Tokens created on Solana (called SPL tokens) can also be wrapped in SOL (Solana’s native coin/token).
Even though sources have revealed that the features could come online in the near future, the exchange has declined to comment on the same.
SPL tokens listing would be a massive step towards Coinbase’s token onboarding strategy and could mark a major development in stepping beyond the Etherverse. For now, Coinbase has only listed Ethereum-based coins and flagship Layer 1 assets such as Algorand (ALGO), Terra (LUNA), and Cosmos (ATOM).
In the past, the exchange stated its mission of listing ‘every’ allowable crypto, and listing SPL tokens could be a step forwards the same. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in a June 2021 Tweet had shared that one of the exchange’s goals would be to ‘list every asset where it is legal to do so.’
That said, tokens built on Ethereum like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Chainlink (LINK) have much larger circulating market capitalizations while the biggest SPL token by market cap is Serum (SRM). Serum’s market cap at the time of writing stood at $272 million and was down 5.40% over the last day.
Furthermore, the total value locked in DeFi for Solana was $7.84 billion and was down almost 50% from its all-time high of $15 billion in early December.