Despite prepping for an impending IPO, Coinbase has remained busy as of late. Not only has one of the worlds largest digital asset exchanges invested in promising up-and-comers, but also taken vital steps towards improving its own operations and infrastructure. The following are several examples of the progress being made in recent days by Coinbase.
Bison Trails Acquired by Coinbase
Roughly one year ago, Bison Trails capped off a wildly successful Series A which saw the company raise $25.5 million USD. Highlighting this raise was participation from companies such as Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and more. This is notable as it was just announced a year later that Coinbase is acquiring Bison Trails.
Between its initial investment in Bison Trails, and close working relationship in the time since, this acquisition is not entirely surprising. Moving forward, Coinbase will now benefit further from the expertise in blockchain infrastructure and network interoperability, brought by Bison Trails.
Rain Financial
While Bison Trails found itself the recipient of an investment from Coinbase Ventures a year ago, another company is walking the same path today. Rain Financial, a digital asset service provider licenced by the Central Bank of Bahrain, has announced the completion of a $6 million USD capital raise, headlined by Coinbase.
Rain Financial, which gives clients in 50 countries access to digital asset trading and custodial solutions, has previously raised funding from investors such as BitMex, to the tune of $2.5 million USD.
Internal Upgrades
For years now, Coinbase has notoriously struggled with its platform during periods of high activity. This typically manifests in the company’s exchange crashing at the most inopportune times, with the issue having recently reared its head on multiple occasions. This has sparked Coinbase to recently announce that it would be restructuring parts of its infrastructure in an attempt to mitigate this lingering problem.
“…extended and severe downtime during some of the most critical moments for our users is unacceptable, and we are pursuing multiple avenues to increase the availability of our services in preparation for heightened load and possible (unknown) future failure modes of our infrastructure.”
One avenue that the company indicates it is considering is to silo various services within its platform, rather than rely on a ‘monolithic application’. Coinbase notes that this will allow it to deploy unique scaling profiles, based on the application, as well as to better isolate issues when they do occur.
Interestingly, a Thai exchange known as Bitkub, was recently ordered to temporarily shutter its operations due to experiencing issues similar to that of Coinbase. An order enforced until its platform infrastructure is upgraded. This order was levied by the Thai SEC, as it works to protect investors from being unable to access holdings during recurring outages. While the SEC in the United States is unlikely to mimic such actions, the aforementioned orders for Bitkub to shut down should be a wake-up call to exchanges capitalizing off a surging sector, without providing top-notch services.
Coinbase
Founded in 2012, Coinbase is based out of Seattle, Washington. Since its launch, the team at Coinbase have developed a variety of offerings, expanding its digital asset exchange
CEO, Brian Armstrong, currently oversees company operations.