Coinbase said Wednesday it will dedicate 10% of its resources to funding crypto moonshots pitched by its employees.
The publicly traded crypto exchangeâs new âProject 10 Percentâ will seek industry-disrupting ideas with â10x impact,â Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee said in a blog post.
Coinbaseâs 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 worldâs biggest search engine including Gmail.
Coinbase, which said it already reserves 10% of work time for âinnovative experimentation,â is now poised to fund employeesâ most promising moonshots with its deep pockets.Â
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. âOur most successful products today started as disruptive bets,â Coinbase said in the blog post.
Chatterjee framed the project as essential to Coinbaseâs continued growth.
âItâs still early days for the crypto economy. By maintaining our culture of repeatable innovation through these 10 Percent projects, weâll be in a position to continue building powerful, simple and compelling product experiences that define the future of our industry,â Chatterjee wrote.