Coinbase Earmarks 10% of Resources to Funding Staff-Pitched Moonshots

Coinbase said Wednesday it will dedicate 10% of its resources to funding crypto moonshots pitched by its employees.

The publicly traded crypto exchange’s new “Project 10 Percent” will seek industry-disrupting ideas with “10x impact,” Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee said in a blog post.

Coinbase’s incubator-style effort places it among a handful of Silicon Valley giants with formal programs to foster internal innovation. For example, Google lets employees spend 20% of their work time on personal projects, an initiative that has yielded massive wins for the world's biggest search engine including Gmail.

Coinbase, which said it already reserves 10% of work time for “innovative experimentation,” is now poised to fund employees’ most promising moonshots with its deep pockets. 

Employees will have two pitch days per year to showcase their ideas. The ones chosen will be evaluated every quarter for progress, and some will be culled. “Our most successful products today started as disruptive bets,” Coinbase said in the blog post.

Chatterjee framed the project as essential to Coinbase’s continued growth.

“It’s still early days for the crypto economy. By maintaining our culture of repeatable innovation through these 10 Percent projects, we’ll be in a position to continue building powerful, simple and compelling product experiences that define the future of our industry,” Chatterjee wrote.