Coinbase accused of charging substantial 'listing fees' by Justin Sun and Andre Cronje, despite CEO's assertion that listings are free

Tron founder Justin Sun joined Andre Cronje, the co-founder of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), in claiming that Coinbase charges substantial listing fees — despite the crypto exchange's CEO, Brian Armstrong, recently reasserting that asset listings are free.

The posts relate back to comments on Binance from Moonrock Capital CEO Simon Dedic, who claimed he recently spoke with a tier-one crypto project that had raised close to nine figures and received a listing offer of 15% of their total token supply from the crypto exchange. “Imagine paying $50–$100M just for a CEX listing. Not only is this unaffordable for projects, but these tokens are also the biggest reason for bleeding charts. Something has to change,” Dedic said. Others disagreed , suggesting if projects wanted Binance’s distribution they needed to pay for it.

Responding to Dedic’s post on Saturday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that asset listings on his exchange were free, encouraging the project to reach out to see if it could help and linking to a May 2022 blog post on its policy. “We have always ensured that listing an asset on Coinbase is completely free of all fees and prerequisite costs,” the blog post states.

However, Armstrong’s comments seemed to spark a backlash from the leadership of some crypto projects, who claimed they had a different experience. “Binance charged us $0,” Cronje, who also previously founded Yearn Finance, replied on Sunday. “Coinbase has asked us for; $300m, $50m, $30m, and more recently $60m. Lots of respect. But this is simply not true.”

Luke Youngblood, former Senior Staff Software Engineer at Coinbase, reiterated that the exchange has never charged listing fees — suggesting Cronje could have been in contact with fake listing agents.

Cronje responded that he was not under a non-disclosure agreement and was happy to provide proof of requests from multiple Coinbase employees over the years. He acknowledged that the crypto exchange could argue it was an “Earn fee” rather than a “listing fee” but alleged that translated into the “cost to be listed” anyway. Youngblood said Earn is a “completely optional” marketing program run by a different team with no bearing on being listed.

Coinbase’s 2022 blog post explains the Earn program as follows: “Once an asset is listed on Coinbase, asset issuers have the at-will opportunity to launch campaigns to educate users about their asset. Coinbase takes a small fee for facilitating these campaigns, but whether or not an Earn campaign is expected has no impact on whether or not the asset will be approved by our listing process.”

Following Cronje’s comments, Tron founder Justin Sun made similar claims on Monday. “Exactly the same situation with us,” Sun said. “Binance charged us $0. Coinbase required us to pay 500 million TRX (worth $80 million) and demanded a $250 million BTC deposit in Coinbase Custody to boost their performance. Lots of respect. But this is simply not true.”

Coinbase Custody is a fee-based service designed for institutional clients. It offers secure storage solutions for large amounts of cryptocurrency.

Coinbase and Binance did not immediately return a request for comment from The Block.