Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system, where anyone in the world can participate on equal terms from their computer or smartphone. To bring this vision about, we’ll need to make blockchain technology more accessible, both in the sense of making cryptocurrencies easier to obtain and easier to understand.

That’s where Coinbase Earn comes in.

Coinbase Earn allows users to earn cryptocurrencies, while learning about them in a simple and engaging way. The idea is for users to understand more about an asset’s utility and its underlying technology, while getting a bit of the asset to try out. To manage demand, we’re launching Coinbase Earn today in invite-only mode with a single asset: ZRX. Over time, we plan to add more educational content as well as the ability to earn other cryptocurrencies.

If you’ve received an invite to Coinbase Earn by email, you can go to the Coinbase Earn ZRX page to earn small amounts of cryptocurrency by completing educational tasks like short video lessons and quizzes. But if you haven’t received an invite yet, don’t worry — you can still view all educational content on the Coinbase Earn page for free, and can sign up on the waitlist to be notified as more educational tasks are available.

Learn: simple and engaging cryptocurrency education

In a survey of Coinbase customers and non-customers alike, we found that one of the biggest barriers preventing people from exploring a new digital asset was a lack of knowledge about that asset. Many of the people we surveyed expressed a strong desire to begin learning about new and different crypto assets beyond Bitcoin, but didn’t know where to begin.

That’s why we’re launching Coinbase Earn with tasks related to asset education. The educational content will be publicly available for any curious party to learn more about an asset, even if they haven’t yet received an invite to begin earning.

Earn: a new way to access cryptocurrency

Traditionally, the two ways people have obtained cryptocurrency are through mining or buying. Mining cryptocurrency typically requires technical knowledge and high upfront costs, while buying cryptocurrency can require disposable income to exchange for cryptocurrencies.

Earning cryptocurrency is a third option. It has the potential to expand the blockchain user base from the tens of millions of people with the resources to mine or buy crypto to the billions of people who now have smartphones. This is because one can — in theory — earn crypto simply by clicking buttons on a phone or laptop.

Coinbase Earn solves many of the practical issues required to turn this theory into practice. We give verified, invited users a series of useful tasks to complete from anywhere to earn digital currency. For this first set of tasks, funding is coming from the 0x external development pool, with 100% of the funds going directly to users. In the future, we may experiment with other kinds of tasks from different types of senders, not necessarily always created by asset developers themselves. For example, there may be tasks paid in Bitcoin that aren’t sent by Satoshi Nakamoto!