Coinbase close to listing Solana ecosystem tokens

The exchange’s stated mission of listing “every” allowable crypto is taking a major step forward with plans to list Solana’s answer to the ERC-20.

Coinbase is readying its trading rails for Solana ecosystem tokens, four sources familiar with the plans told CoinDesk.

The U.S.-based crypto exchange plans to allow withdrawals of SPL, or “Solana Program Library,” tokens – Solana’s answer to Ethereum’s ERC-20 – the sources said. One person added that Solana-native USDC, with its $4.8 billion in circulating supply, would be among the supported assets.

Sources said the features could come online in the near future. Coinbase declined to comment.

Listing SPL tokens would appear to mark a major development in Coinbase’s token onboarding strategy. Up to now, it has only listed Ethereum-based coins and flagship Layer 1 assets such as Algorand (ALGO) and Cosmos (ATOM), a review of its listings found.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s sweeping goal – “list *every* asset where it is legal to do so,” he tweeted in June 2021 – increasingly necessitates stepping beyond the Etherverse.

That said, Solana’s landscape of decentralized finance (DeFi) coins – for exchanges, staking protocols and more – is still relatively small in terms of market value.

While Ethereum-based tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Chainlink (LINK) command circulating market capitalizations near $10 billion, the biggest SPL token by the same metric is Serum (SRM) at $281 million, according to Coinbase data.

It was not immediately clear which regions the trading would first come online, or which SPL tokens Coinbase plans to start with.