Coinbase announced Thursday that is has more than $30 billion worth of crypto assets staked on its platform as of November 2021.
Coinbase holds these assets on its Cloud platform, which it operates along with staking infrastructure firm Bison Trails. Coinbase acquired Bison Trails earlier this year for a reported price of above $80 million. Coinbase says Bison Trails is a non-custodial platform, meaning it does not control clients’ staked assets.
Coinbase clients and non-custodial users have staked the massive amount of assets across 25 proof-of-stake blockchain networks, including Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2) — which is yet to fully launch — Tezos (XTZ), and Cosmos Hub (ATOM).
Since Coinbase takes a 25% commission from staking rewards for its custodial clients, that suggests the firm is making a killing out of this part of its business. Bison Trails, for its part, only takes an 8% cut of staking rewards. It’s unclear how much of the funds are from Coinbase’s clients as opposed to non-custodial funds via Bison Trails.
Staking is a way of earning passive income by locking up proof-of-stake coins. Rewards are provided because these coins are effectively used as collateral by validators or nodes when validating a block of transactions.
Other largest staking platforms include those offered by Coinbase rivals Kraken and Binance. Plus there are staking-focused firms like Blockdaemon, Figment and Chorus One.