From its earliest days, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) says that it has sharply focused on protecting their clients’ assets with the strongest, most robust security tech available in the markets.
Over time, Coinbase‘s approaches have evolved, but their objective has always been the same: “to provide the safest, most secure and most trusted venue for anyone to interact with the cryptoeconomy.”
As mentioned in an update shared by Coinbase:
“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 strategic 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.”
The announcement also noted that 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 update explained.
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 like 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 their 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,” the announcement noted.
In addition to the tech expertise that Coinbase should gain via this acquisition, they also intend to form a tech center of excellence in Israel that will “ensure that Coinbase is always at the bleeding edge of security and blockchain technology.”
As noted by Coinbase:
“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.”
The firm added:
“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.”
As confirmed in the update, this acquisition is “subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the coming months.”