On Tuesday (18 December 2018), day 9 of Coinbase’s “12 Days of Coinbase” initiative (a new announcement every day between December 10th and December 21st), the crypto exchange announced on its blog that it was adding support for a second stablecoin, Dai (DAI), Maker’s governance token, i.e. makercoin (MKR), and two other Ethereum tokens, Golem Network Token (GNT) and Zilliqa (ZIL), to Coinbase Pro, its platform for professional or experienced traders.

On 26 March 2018, Coinbase announced that it intended to “support the Ethereum ERC20 technical standard for Coinbase in the coming months.” Following successful launches of seven such ERC20 tokens—0x (ZRX), Basic Attention Token (BAT), stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), Civic (CVC), district0x (DNT), Loom Network (LOOM), and Decentraland (MANA)—Coinbase has now added support for four more Ethereum tokens: DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL.

And to answer all those people who are wondering why some more Ethereum tokens were being added instead of their much more popular favorite token/coin, Coinbase has this to say:

“Our decision to add ERC20 tokens first is based on the relative ease of integrating the standard with our existing infrastructure, particularly from a security standpoint. However, as noted in our earlier post, we are exploring the addition of many new assets beyond ERC20 tokens on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis.”

The blog post warns that each of these four new tokens “has associated functionality, some of which may be in beta.” Also, it points out:

“… each token’s associated functionality is not currently directly accessible via the Coinbase Pro platform. For example, the Golem GNT token provides access to a distributed compute farm, the Zilliqa network can be used to experiment with high-performance smart contracts, and the MKR and DAI tokens form a paired set of assets in which MKR provides governance, and DAI is a decentralized, collateral-backed stablecoin. In particular, direct access to smart contract functionality will not be immediately available through Coinbase Pro. As a result, users who want to engage in MKR governance, use their GNT tokens to submit rendering tasks to the Golem beta network, utilize functionality like Compound, or exit DAI positions in the event of global settlement will need to move their assets from Coinbase Pro to a local wallet.”

Finally, it says that the Coinbase Pro platform in the U.S. will only support trading in DAI and GNT, whereas outside the U.S., in select jurisdictions, Coinbase Pro will support trading in MKR and ZIL.

Coinbase Pro started accepting DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL deposits around 19:45 UTC on December 18th; as with previous new listings, the exchange will continue accepting deposits “for at least 12 hours prior to enabling trading.” And as usual, only when there is sufficient liquidity, “trading will begin on each respective USDC order book”. The jurisdictions currently supported are the U.S. (excluding NY state), Canada, UK, European Union, Singapore, and Australia. Additional jurisdictions may get supported in the future.

Note that only once Coinbase has seen that there are no technical issues with trading of these new assets on its Pro platform, it will consider adding them to Coinbase Consumer (Coinbase.com) or its mobile apps.

As usual, Coinbase is using a four-stage launch process. Each of these stages will be followed independently “for each new order book”. If at any point, one of these new order books fails to meet Coinbase’s standards “for a healthy and orderly market”, they may “keep the book in one state for a longer period of time, or suspend trading.”

The four stages are:

Transfer-only . During this stage, which started around 19:45 UTC on December 18th, customers can transfer DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL into their Coinbase Pro account. “Customers will not yet be able to place orders, and no orders will be filled on these order books. Order books will be in transfer-only mode for at least 12 hours.”

. During this stage, which started around 19:45 UTC on December 18th, customers can transfer DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL into their Coinbase Pro account. “Customers will not yet be able to place orders, and no orders will be filled on these order books. Order books will be in transfer-only mode for at least 12 hours.” Post-only . “In the second stage, customers can post limit orders but there will be no matches (completed orders). Order books will be in post-only mode for a minimum of one minute.

. “In the second stage, customers can post limit orders but there will be no matches (completed orders). Order books will be in post-only mode for a minimum of one minute. Limit-only . “In the third stage, limit orders will start matching but customers are unable to submit market orders. Order books will be in limit-only mode for a minimum of ten minutes.”

. “In the third stage, limit orders will start matching but customers are unable to submit market orders. Order books will be in limit-only mode for a minimum of ten minutes.” Full trading. In the final stage, Coinbase “may choose to leave the order book in limit-only mode” or it “may make full trading services available, including limit, market, and stop orders.”

At press time, according to data from CryptoCompare, DAI, MKR, GNT, and ZIL are trading around $1.04 (down -0.95%), $443.92 (up 15.04%), $0.06709 (up 7.83%), and $0.01583 (up 5.53%) respectively.

Featured Image Courtesy of Coinbase