Stephanie Douse 
Coinbase said it has plans to continue to increase its staking portfolio through the end of 2022.
Over the last year, Coinbase, a publicly-traded cryptocurrency exchange, has gone on a listing binge, adding everything from ApeCoin (APE) to Wrapped Centrifuge (WCFG).
It is also improving its stake alternatives. The exchange announced today that staking for ADA, the Cardano blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, is now available.
Senior product manager Rupmalini Sahu explained the choice by citing ADA’s top-10 market capitalization and “flexible, sustainable, and scalable” blockchain design.
Smart contracts, similar to Ethereum and Solana, are used in this architecture to enable decentralized finance, NFTs, and other network operations.
Cardano is a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, which means that, unlike Bitcoin, its network is protected by participants pledging a portion of their ADA holdings to the network.
In exchange, they will receive a portion of the newly issued ADA. Because this “staking” process can be overwhelming or time-consuming for the typical user, Coinbase and other exchanges offer to take care of it for customers by pooling ADA on the Cardano network and transferring a share of the benefits.
It expects a 3.75 percent annual return, which will be distributed every five to seven days.
Cardano continues strong run in the exchange market
Cardano is enjoying a great week in comparison to other popular coins, with its price jumping from $1.00 to $1.09 at the time of posting.
The price of ADA has increased by 30% in the last seven days, compared to a 10% increase for Ethereum and an 8% increase for Solana.
After Algorand, Cosmos, Ethereum, and Tezos, ADA is the fifth coin for which Coinbase offers staking services. “We expect to continue to increase our staking portfolio in 2022,” Sahu says.
This aligns the company’s stake-taking objectives with CEO Brian Armstrong‘s expansionist tone. “Our goal is to list every asset where it is lawful to do so,” he tweeted in June of last year.
The exchange, which has been behind in terms of listings for a long time, now offers 168 different coins and tokens. It only offered roughly 60 to begin 2021.