Coinbase to Launch cbBTC Token on Solana

Crypto exchange Coinbase plans to bring its cbBTC token onto the Solana blockchain, as announced by the company’s Singapore head, Hassan Ahmed, at the Solana Breakpoint 2024 event held in Singapore on Saturday.

“We recently launched cbBTC on Base, but our users love Solana, and so do we,” said Ahmed during a panel discussion at Breakpoint. However, a detailed timeline for cbBTC’s availability on Solana was not provided.

The exchange launched its version of wrapped bitcoin last week after teasing the token in August. cbBTC was initially rolled out on Ethereum and Base networks.

The ERC-20 token is supported 1:1 by bitcoin held by Coinbase, aimed at users looking to provide bitcoin liquidity to DeFi protocols in Ethereum and Base ecosystems or for use as collateral for other assets. The announcement of the token followed changes in the ownership of the competitor token WBTC.

At launch, Coinbase stated it was working to expand cbBTC’s support to additional blockchain networks. Currently, the Coinbase wrapped Bitcoin holds around $137 million in market capitalization, according to CoinGecko data.

In response to inquiries about the estimated launch date, Ahmed noted, “We are working on it and will announce once live.”

Coinbase on Firedancer

During a discussion on institutional roles in Web3, Ahmed praised Jump Crypto’s work on the Firedancer validator client on Solana, calling it the “most impressive” example of institutional support enhancing blockchain diversification.

“Client diversity is one of the core components of the Nakamoto coefficient,” added Ahmed. He mentioned that the launch of Frankendancer and Firedancer would significantly improve Solana’s network decentralization.

On Friday, Jump Crypto’s Chief Science Officer Kevin Bowers announced at Breakpoint that the Frankendancer validator client, a prototype of Firedancer, has launched on Solana mainnet, while Firedancer is operational on testnet.

Liam Heeger, a blockchain engineer for Firedancer, shared at Breakpoint that the fully non-voting, non-block producing Firedancer validator client has been intermittently live for about two months but is not yet ready for general use and production.