TL;DR Today we’re sharing a glimpse into how we approach Product Design at Coinbase. Recently, we made a number of important updates to the Coinbase app to help make it even more simple, accessible, and trusted by our customers around the world.
At Coinbase, we value fast shipping and experimentation. Over the past few years, the app has grown alongside the crypto space. What started as a platform for trading a handful of assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum has transformed into a gateway to a rich and diverse onchain ecosystem. Our teams are typically heads-down, focused on building features and getting value out to our customers as fast as possible. On the plus side, that means our customers get access to features like onchain USDC loans quickly. On the down side, it can add unwanted complexity to our user interface, and sometimes make other tasks feel less simple.
When we updated our app recently to address some of that complexity, it wasn’t just a functional tune-up; it was a chance to take everything up a notch. We wanted the app to not only feel easier to navigate but also look and perform at a level that matches our mission: making crypto accessible to everyone. That level of customer focus is deeply engrained into Coinbase’s culture. For us that means obsessing over the details, solving real problems with technology, and crafting products that our customers genuinely love and trust.
When it came to simplifying the Coinbase app, we zeroed in on the key tasks our users rely on the most. We looked at every tab and feature with fresh eyes and asked ourselves: How can we make this clearer, faster, and more delightful to use?
Home: The Home tab is now an even more effective place to get quickly caught up on changes to your balance, your favorite assets, and the market more broadly. We fine-tuned this experience by providing a concise but informative account overview to quickly visualize the changes to the account. We also aimed at elevating the staked and cash balance alongside the crypto balance as more people put their savings into trusted stablecoins, helping our customers boost their earned rewards.
My Assets: With more people embracing staking and other earning opportunities, we redesigned the My Assets tab to consolidate assets and rewards in one place. Now, it’s a one-stop hub for managing both crypto and cash holdings and discovering opportunities to earn rewards more easily and contextually. We’ve already seen people more effectively assessing how they’re performing, taking action, and maximizing their outcomes.
Asset details: Nobody wants to hunt for critical information. That’s why we massively simplified and streamlined the detail pages for individual assets. This allows our customers to find the information they are looking for more quickly—whether it’s balance details, performance stats, reward opportunities, transactions, or general information about an asset—and make informed decisions with confidence.
Transactions: With the all-new Transactions tab, we’ve made it easier to keep track of how funds move—from deposits to trades, rewards, and payments. It’s a financial timeline for everything on Coinbase. Since introducing this feature, our customers have especially appreciated the granularity and ease of filtering.
Explore: Introduced in early 2024, Explore is designed as a research-driven surface for customers to plan their next trade or stay up to date on trends. As part of these broader changes, we further enhanced Explore by integrating more content to help research assets and gain deeper crypto knowledge. Whether it’s discovering new assets, analyzing trends, or diving into crypto education, this tab keeps customers informed and empowered.
Finally, we’d be remiss not to mention Coinbase Wallet—our self-custody wallet app that provides a gateway to the ecosystem of decentralized, onchain apps. By considering our two consumer-oriented apps holistically, we were able to ensure both apps can do what they do best and function even more harmoniously as a pair. Stay tuned as we share more in 2025 about how we’re making Coinbase Wallet the most powerful onchain app.
All in all, the improvements we made allowed us to meaningfully simplify the Coinbase app and put renewed emphasis on the craft and quality of our product. Here’s a few things that stood out during this journey:
Nurture design systems: Wide adoption of our Coinbase Design System (~95%) made for a more cohesive experience across both our mobile app and web experience, so our product feels polished and familiar no matter where and how you access Coinbase. It also sped up development, so we could make these updates faster than ever before.
Look at the big picture: At Coinbase we strive to remain humble and to value learning over being right. Running regular usability studies across the entire end-to-end product, not just on new features, was invaluable in shaping these updates. Hearing directly from people who rely on our app every day or just got started helped us improve the user experience more holistically.
Stick to your values: Every now and then, it’s important to take a breather, zoom out, and ask: Are we still delivering on the promise we set out to achieve? By taking a step back and re-focusing on core user journeys, we successfully made the app easier to navigate while laying the groundwork for new financial utility in the future.
This update isn’t just about what we’ve done—it’s about where we’re going. By keeping things simple, accessible, and user-focused, we’re making sure the Coinbase app is ready to support everyone in a world where crypto plays an ever-expanding role in our financial lives. We’re excited for everything that’s to come in 2025 and to keep building, refining, and learning along the way.
We’re partnering with JPMorgan Chase to offer 3 new ways to participate in crypto: the ability to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to USDC, the ability to use Chase credit cards to fund your Coinbase account, and a new direct bank integration.
