coindesk.com
Crypto custody firm Cordial Systems came out of stealth mode with clients including Jump Crypto and Backpack Exchange.
Rather than just giving the client a share of a cryptographic key, Cordial allows all software and processes to be run on the customer side.
Jump Trading is also an investor in Cordial Systems.
Cryptocurrency safekeeping firm Cordial Systems identified the first major clients of its institution-focused, self-custody technology, including Jump Crypto and Backpack Exchange.
The Cordial Treasury product diverges from the traditional multiparty computation (MPC) approach to protecting wallets, whereby cryptographic keys are split into parts, or shards. These are usually shared between the client and the vendor, which keeps control of the custody process. In contrast, Cordial puts the whole process under the control of the customer, co-founder Sebastian Higgs said in an interview.
The bankruptcies of crypto companies such as crypto exchange FTX, leaving customers without access to their assets, helped drive institutions toward self-custodial products and technologies, among them MPC. While that means the assets are no longer kept centrally by one organization, it still leaves the custodian with a degree of control.
“We give all the software to the customer side, not just a bit of the key. So they basically run everything on their side,” Higgs said. “We reduce ourselves to a simple vendor/supplier relationship where we just do code updates. You don't need us to sign things, you don't need us to change things on a day-to-day operational basis, you're fully independent. I think for firms like Jump, who have a lot of regulatory oversight, that solves a lot of headaches.”
Cordial Treasury currently supports over 30 blockchains including all bitcoin and relevant forks, Ethereum and other EVM chains, the Polkadot ecosystem, Cosmos ecosystem, Provenance, Aptos and Sui. Other networks have the capability to be added in as short as one week, according to a press release.
Alex Davies, CTO of Jump Trading, said Cordial Treasury helped scale Jump’s digital asset business, and the trading firm is also happy to be an investor in Cordial Systems. Details of the investment were not disclosed.
“We host Cordial Treasury in a highly available and secure configuration as part of our proprietary technology stack," he said in a statement. "Being able to enforce precisely defined policies from our digital asset control framework via independently controlled software with large numbers both of internal users and external chains has allowed us to safely keep up with fast-moving business requirements and stay at the forefront of the industry.”