Kraken is designing Ink to be as easy to use as Apple products, bridging centralized and decentralized ecosystems.
Leading global cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced plans to launch its own native blockchain, where users can access the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem without centralized authorities or intermediaries, following in the footsteps of its American rival Coinbase, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
According to the report, the new blockchain, dubbed Ink, was inspired by Base, a Coinbase-owned decentralized network built on Ethereum as a layer-2 scaling solution, helping to solve some of the trilemma challenges of the protocol.
Kraken to Launch Ink in 2025
Kraken will roll out the beta phase of the project before the end of this year, with the official debut scheduled for early 2025. Once launched, blockchain developers can explore the platform for building their decentralized applications, allowing for trading, borrowing, and lending of digital assets without intermediaries.
Per the report, Ink will be available for both retail and institutional users at launch. Users will be able to access applications on the blockchain through Kraken’s wallet, which Andrew Koller, founder of the protocol, claimed is easy to use.
“It’s a very easy-to-use, Apple-esque experience. Over time, our users will have these two centralized and decentralized ecosystems playing with each other. We want you to feel that you are doing something familiar,” Koller told Bloomberg.
He estimated that more than a dozen applications, including decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and aggregators, will be available on Ink at launch next year. In the future, he believes the blockchain will become home to more complex applications across different sectors, including real-world assets (RWAs) and advanced lending platforms.
No Native Token for Ink
Despite being a separate entity from the exchange, Koller told Bloomberg that the decentralized protocol will not have its own native crypto asset like other blockchains such as Bitcoin BTC $89 309 24h volatility: 0.3% Market cap: $1.78 T Vol. 24h: $21.51 B , Polygon [NC], Optimism OP $0.31 24h volatility: 0.9% Market cap: $587.57 M Vol. 24h: $48.70 M , and the BNB Chain BNB $891.5 24h volatility: 0.7% Market cap: $122.76 B Vol. 24h: $969.35 M .
According to him, Kraken plans to redirect the energy of owning a token to expanding the protocol’s functionalities to make it “cheaper and more intuitive to use DeFi to earn yield and for other functions”.
The crypto exchange will serve as the network’s sequencer, earning revenue from organizing and managing transactions on the network initially, before it is eventually decentralized and handled by other parties. Kraken adopted this strategy from Coinbase, which generated $53 million in sequencer revenue from its Base protocol.
Koller disclosed that Kraken employed about 40 individuals working on Ink. The firm is also planning to host a series of events to attract more developers to build on the protocol. One of the developer events, known as Devcon, will be hosted in November this year in Thailand.
Kraken Expands Globally Amid Legal Challenges
Kraken’s upcoming blockchain comes at a time when the company is aggressively expanding its product offerings. Recently, the exchange acquired a Dutch brokerage firm to increase its presence in Europe. Through the company Coin Meester (BCM), Kraken will now serve as a regulated exchange in the region.
Despite legal challenges in regions like the United States, Kraken has continually earned regulatory approval in other parts of the world. Founded in San Francisco in 2011, the company operates in both France and Poland as a registered virtual asset service provider (VASP).
In early 2024, Bloomberg reported that Kraken was considering going public.
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