The U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase plans to buy yet another company in what’s become one of its most aggressive years on record for M&A. The crypto giant has agreed to acquire the Solana trading platform Vector.fun, Max Branzburg, Coinbase’s vice president of product management, told Fortune. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Branzburg declined to disclose the acquisition terms.
Vector.fun is a decentralized exchange on the blockchain Solana. The product’s users primarily trade memecoins and can follow other traders’ bets and investments. As part of the acquisition, Coinbase will shut down Vector.fun’s mobile and desktop trading apps, and hire the platform’s 13 employees.
Coinbase plans to use Vector.fun’s technology to expand the assets its users can trade on its app through decentralized exchanges. (This feature is separate from Coinbase’s core business of centralized trading.) Currently, the company only lets users trade tokens through exchanges built on top of Base, Coinbase’s own blockchain. The crypto exchange hopes to expand access to Solana, said Branzburg.
“The Coinbase app is really meant to be an agnostic platform to enable people to trade all of the assets they want to trade,” he added, referencing the company’s efforts to become what it calls the “everything exchange.”
