In order to catch up to its rival Coinbase in the product market and enter a crowded field that already includes significant companies like MetaMask, Ledger, and Trezor, Kraken, the second-biggest cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, has created its own wallet.
As previously reported, the new self-custodial “Kraken Wallet” is set to launch on Wednesday, catering to both Kraken users and non-users. Eight blockchains, including Base, Arbitrum, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Solana, Optimism, and Bitcoin, will be supported by the wallet at first.
The Kraken Wallet will be the first major exchange product to be made open-sourced, according a blog post. Developers are therefore able to access and modify the code.
In order to improve the wallets in the case that there are problems, Kraken will also compensate developers who discover vulnerabilities through its open-source grant program.
Many cryptocurrency users place a high priority on privacy, and Kraken states that the wallet would only gather the “absolute minimum amount of data to function as a wallet.” “User activity is proxied through Kraken’s own infrastructure, protecting IP addresses and avoiding the possibility of users’ location and identity being exposed to the public.”
In addition to the widely used Coinbase Wallet, at least two other significant cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and OKX, have wallets that allow users to integrate with their networks.
The rumors so far
Over the past few months, Kraken has been expanding its line of goods.
Not long after Coinbase debuted Base, its own rollup chain, in August, Kraken was rumored to be in talks with many layer 2 teams in November about creating their own layer 2.
The risks associated with leaving cryptocurrency on centralized exchanges were highlighted by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange failure in 2022, which may help to explain why companies like Coinbase and Kraken have been snooping about for business prospects involving on-blockchain products.
