Today, we’re announcing the next phase of our security journey with the acquisition of Unbound Security. Based in Israel, it is a pioneer in a number of cryptographic security technologies, including the emerging field of secure multi-party computation (MPC), a highly advanced technology for which Unbound Security’s co-founder, Yehuda Lindell, is a world leader. With this acquisition, Coinbase not only gains access to some of the world’s most sophisticated cryptographic security experts, including Unbound Security co-founder and current Vice President of Research and Development, Guy Peer, who brings more than 20 years of experience in cryptographic security, but also a presence in Israel, a well-established and rapidly growing technology hub. This presence in Israel will add an additional powerful prong to Coinbase’s global talent acquisition strategy, following on closely to recent thrusts into engineering talent bases such as India, Singapore and Brazil.

Crypto can’t grow without strong cryptography and strong security, but it also needs to be user friendly. Secure multi-party computation is an application of advanced mathematics to enable crypto assets to be stored, transferred and deployed more securely, easily and flexibly than ever before.

The cryptoeconomy is growing exponentially with myriad new use cases such as staking, DeFi, DAOs and NFTs. Unfortunately so are the threat vectors and complexities for participants to safely manage their crypto private keys. Technologies such as MPC will enable these groundbreaking use cases to come to life safely, securely and in a way that’s user friendly. MPC will deliver on this by protecting our customers’ assets with a technique that provides the virtually impenetrable nature of cold, offline storage, with the frictionless convenience of hot, online wallets. Over time MPC capabilities will enable new features across our consumer, institutional and cloud products to participate in the cryptoeconomy.

In addition to the technological expertise that we will gain through this acquisition, we also plan to establish a tech center of excellence in Israel that will ensure that Coinbase is always at the bleeding edge of security and blockchain technology. We’ve long recognized Israel as a hot bed of strong technology and cryptography talent, and are excited to continue to grow our team with some of the best and brightest minds in these fields. The Unbound Security team will form the nucleus of this new research facility, which we plan to grow over time.

We’re always proud to welcome top talent to Coinbase and the Unbound Security team represents the very best expertise in its field. We look forward to working with them over time to move the entire state of cryptographic security forward and to continue delivering the highest levels of security to our customers. Please join us in welcoming the team to Coinbase.

This acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the coming months.