Blockdaemon Sets Sights on Large Institutions With New Wallet App

Blockdaemon, a leading crypto infrastructure provider, is launching an all-in-one wallet service to help large-scale institutions and crypto custodians steward their assets without entrusting them to third parties.

Blockdaemon Wallet will incorporate some of the firm’s existing wallet infrastructure – along with a handful of new features – into a new platform focused on security, compliance and liquidity, according to the company.

Nearly every crypto investor has at some point heard the adage, “not your keys, not your crypto” – the point being that holding assets in one’s own crypto wallet, rather than entrusting them to an intermediary, is the only true way to guarantee that those funds stay safe.

Large financial institutions, however, are forced to contend with regulations and security constraints that make consumer-focused crypto wallets (e.g., browser wallets like MetaMask or hardware wallets like Ledger) inadequate. For this reason, they frequently secure their assets with third-party “custodians.”

But some custodians struggle to offer customers instant access to their funds, and trusting a middleman with your crypto is difficult to square with the “not your keys, not your crypto” ethos.

Self-custody

The past year is replete with examples of companies like the FTX exchange and crypto lender Celsius Network that squandered their clients’ funds – or collapsed into bankruptcy, only for clients’ crypto holdings to be trapped.

“Self-custody has become more important not just for individuals, but also for our customer base, which is institutions,” Blockdaemon CEO Konstantin Richter told CoinDesk. “We saw a sort of blatant gap in the market, which is that larger institutions really want to control keys and assets, and they also want to make sure that they have access to liquidity, are compliant, and have the highest degree of security.”

Blockdaemon, which raised $207 million in Series C funding last year and counts the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs and the investment firm Tiger Global among its investors, offers a suite of blockchain infrastructure products geared towards crypto custodians, stakers and node operators.

Richter says the Blockdaemon Wallet plans to eventually integrate other elements of Blockdaemon’s toolkit, like its staking suite which helps institutions “stake” crypto on blockchains such as Ethereum in return for a reward.