Coinbase has announced the intention to support the ERC20 technical standard used for Ethereum (TIKER: ETH/USD.BITFINEX) smart contracts in the coming months, the company said in a blog post.
The technical standard will allow the cryptocurrency exchange to support ERC20 assets and Ethereum tokens in the future, paving the way for the adoption of new ERC20 token contracts and products potentially including EOS, Tronix, ICON, VeChain, and Bytom.
Support for ERC20 will first have to appear on GDAX. After evaluating factors such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics, teh exchange may choose to add any ERC20 asset added to GDAX to the Coinbase platform.
“GDAX will likely have more assets listed on the platform than the Coinbase platform, i.e. listing on GDAX does not guarantee listing on Coinbase,” the company said.
ERC20 assets have become a popular way for teams to quickly build interoperable contracts/assets. More recently, our Ethereum wallet and Dapp browser Toshi added native support for ERC20.
“Support for ERC20 will also give us a path to enabling the safe recovery of customer ERC20 assets inadvertently sent to GDAX Ethereum addresses,” Coinbase said.
This standard and support may also be added to other products, but there is no planned support for ERC20 on Coinbase Commerce.
Earlier this month, Coinbase announced its intention to create an index fund for cryptocurrency asset management.