TL; DR
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Coinbase’s new smart wallet lets you sign up/log in with FaceID or email, avoid paying gas fees for transactions, and automatically bridges between chains for you.
Full story
“All wise men fear the wrath of a gentle man.”
We think of that quote every time we try to get our dads to set up their own self-custody crypto wallets.
The friction and complexity of having to write down a twelve-word seed sentence, and re-enter it with every new device you want to live on, caused Chevy’s father to pull his Nokia 3310 out of the “stuff drawer” in his office, before he use it to text him:
“You’re not invited to Christmas lunch this year.”
Good. Those days are over.
Yesterday, Coinbase announced the soft launch of their ‘smart wallet’.
It changes just about everything we’re used to doing when it comes to exploring crypto…
To demonstrate this, here is a side-by-side comparison of the two experiences:
Stupid wallets
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Download the wallet app and click sign up.
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Record the 12-word seed phrase on an offline device.
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Use that seed phrase as a password to transfer your wallet to different devices.
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Create a separate exchange account, buy ETH from that exchange and send it to your wallet (for a fee of ~$20+).
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Explore a range of applications, platforms and services by manually bridging (aka transferring) your ETH tokens from Tier 1 to a range of Tier 2 – with an initial transfer fee of ~$20+.
(A Google search is needed to do this safely the first time).
Smart wallets
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Download the wallet app, click sign in, FaceID or ‘Sign in with Google’ will be activated, you now have a self-custody wallet that can be accessed across devices with the same login process.
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Buy ETH from your smart wallet.
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Explore a range of applications, platforms and services (the wallet automatically carries out all required transfers) – with no transaction fees.
At launch, the Coinbase smart wallet will support:
Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB and Zora – bringing a consumer-friendly user experience to crypto, once and for all.
No more holding hands.
No more ‘ah, look what you have to do’.
Never being invited to Christmas lunch again.