Coinbase Adds Messaging Function to Crypto Wallet

Coinbase is giving its crypto wallet users a way to talk.

The publicly traded crypto company said Wednesday its wallet product will support encrypted messaging. The new feature lets any two Ethereum addresses communicate – provided they both plug into the same messaging backbone, a communications protocol called XMTP.

Coinbase isn’t the first crypto wallet maker to toy with Web3 messaging, but its integration is almost certainly the largest. Its wallet boasts 1.3 million users with usernames. The pool of messageable Ethereum addresses is even larger, including everyone on Web3 social platform Lens.

“Coinbase is enabling users to easily port their conversations from any of the ~450 applications built on XMTP to Coinbase Wallet,” said Director of Product Management Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu. “Its infrastructure allows Coinbase Wallet messages to be fully permissionless and interoperable while giving users the freedom to fully own their messages and transactions through their personal, on-chain identity.”

Although messages are being sent to and from crypto wallets, they aren’t actually being recorded on a blockchain (a difference from how asset transfers work). XMTP messages travel across a permissioned network of nodes controlled by XTMP Labs. The company has said it is working to decentralize this network over time.