Coinbase Pro announced the coming addition of the proof-of-stake and democratically-governed Tezos blockchain to its institutional trading platform.
Tezos (XTZ), a multi-million dollar blockchain that officially launched in September 2018, offers the opportunity for its stakeholders to vote on-chain on proposed upgrades. When Tezos was added to another Coinbase affiliate, Coinbase Custody, in March, the move was contested by those who opposed the extension of voting rights to custodial token holders.
It is unclear whether Coinbase Pro will offer “self-amending” duties to users of its platform.
Before trading is activated, Coinbase Pro must build reserves of the coins in trading pairs with BTC and USD. Beginning on Monday, August 5, the firm will accept inbound transfers of XTZ 12 hours in advance of launch, according to a company blog post.
“Once sufficient supply of XTZ is established on the platform, trading on the XTZ/USD, and XTZ/BTC order books will start in phases, beginning with post-only mode and proceeding to full trading should our metrics for a healthy market be met,” the company states.
Similar to onboarding other digital assets to the trading platform, Coinbase expects to move through four stages before tezos functionality is fully operational.
The first is “Transfer-only,” when orderbooks will only support incoming coins. Once a reserve is established, the platform will enter into the minute-long “Post only” phase, where users will be able to post limit orders that will remain unfulfilled. Third is “Limit-only” in which “limit orders will start matching but customers are unable to submit market orders.”
After these embryonic stages, full trading will be enabled. Importantly, Tezos will not be available on Coinbase itself. Tezos held a $232 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, one of the largest funding events at the time.
Last month, Coinbase Pro added trading Chainlink, the company expects to roll out additional digital assets.
Tezos logo via the CoinDesk archive