The gold rush mentality that defined the cryptoassets industry in 2017 and saw the price of Bitcoin approach $20k turned Coinbase into a household name. Chances are if a crypto novice made his or her first purchase last year, it was made on Coinbase’s platform. The numbers bear this out: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted last week that the company was adding 50k customers a day in 2017. Furthermore, according to a May 2018 report in the Washington Post, Coinbase now has over 20 million accounts, outpacing longstanding industry stalwarts such as Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab. This rate of growth, combined with its new focus on custody and other services targeting institutional money, turned Coinbase into one of a handful of “structurally significant” companies in the entire crypto industry. However, while attention has been focused on its trading and investment activities, Coinbase has been quietly working on another key initiative that has the potential to be even more consequential. Originally announced in April 2017, Toshi was built to be mobile crypto wallet and browser for distributed applications on Ethereum. Included in the initial announcement were plans for a strong identity component, complete with a reputation system for individual users. There were even aspirations to integrate uPort, ConsenSys’ native identity system for Ethereum into the project.