Coinbase Wallet has introduced a new feature that allows users to earn a 4.7% APY simply by holding USDC on-chain. Unlike traditional methods, users don’t need to stake or lock their funds to receive these rewards; holding USDC in Coinbase Wallet is sufficient. Importantly, the funds remain liquid, and rewards are distributed monthly and directly into users’ wallets on the Base chain.

While the rewards are paid out on the Base chain, this feature is available for USDC balances held in Coinbase Wallet across several networks, including Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche C-Chain, Polygon, and Optimism. Beyond earning rewards, users can send USDC on the Base network instantly and without any fees.

This new offering was rolled out to U.S. users last week and is available in most regions globally. As the owner of both Coinbase Wallet and the Base blockchain and as a shareholder in Circle, Coinbase aims to expand its user base and increase USDC adoption through this initiative.

According to Defillama, there are currently $3.37 billion stablecoins on the Base chain, with 92% of these being USDC. This number hasn’t seen significant growth since the summer of this year, but the new initiative is expected to help change that.

At the same time, interest on stablecoins may negatively affect their circulation volume, if users choose to spend "bad" stablecoins and keep the profitable ones.

Although the company hasn’t disclosed the source of these rewards, it is likely that they are subsidized by both Coinbase and Circle, the issuer of USDC. Notably, this is the first initiative by a major stablecoin issuer to offer native rewards. Its main competitor, Tether’s USDT, has yet to introduce a similar offering. 

While smaller stablecoin projects have been more proactive in offering rewards to attract users by sharing a portion of their profits, the adoption of similar tactics by larger projects could significantly intensify competition, potentially disadvantaging smaller projects. 

Overall, this initiative appears to be part of Coinbase’s broader strategy to accelerate on-chain payments. Earlier this month, Coinbase acquired the Utopia Labs team, which has extensive experience in developing on-chain payment products. 

The Utopia team has been on the ground floor building onchain payments products for years. We're pumped for them to join us to accelerate our goal of bringing low-cost, fast, and global payments to everyone around the world. 

In Q2 2024, stablecoins processed $8.5 trillion in transaction volume across 1.1 billion transactions. Through its range of products, Coinbase aims to enhance the user experience and capture a substantial share of this market. 

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