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Frgmnt has partnered with Anchorage Digital to give institutional clients access to its fUSD stablecoin and sfUSD staking product through Anchorage’s existing custody infrastructure.
In a press release shared with crypto.news, Frgmnt said institutions will be able to hold, mint, stake, unstake and redeem fUSD through Anchorage Digital, allowing clients to use the stablecoin without setting up a separate custody arrangement.
The integration covers both fUSD and sfUSD, two assets operated by Frgmnt on Base. fUSD is minted against $USDC, while holders can stake the token to receive sfUSD and earn rewards generated by the protocol’s underlying strategies.
“Institutions should be able to access onchain financial products through infrastructure that meets their operational and custody requirements,” Frgmnt CEO and co-founder Aurélien Roussel said.
Roussel said bringing the two assets into Anchorage Digital’s institutional environment would make Frgmnt accessible to funds, corporate treasuries and fintech companies already using institutional digital asset infrastructure.
Anchorage Digital gives fUSD an institutional custody route
Frgmnt deploys the $USDC backing fUSD across selected onchain lending markets. Users who want exposure to the rewards generated by those strategies can stake their fUSD for sfUSD.
The partnership puts those functions inside Anchorage Digital’s custody and operational environment, where institutional clients can manage the process alongside other digital assets.
Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. operates under a federal charter and is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Its platform provides services including custody, staking, trading and settlement.
The company has expanded the range of onchain services available through its custody infrastructure this year. In July, Anchorage integrated Lido, allowing institutional clients to mint and burn wrapped staked Ether without moving assets outside its custody environment. Clients could access Ethereum staking rewards while retaining Anchorage’s custody, governance, reporting and settlement infrastructure.
A separate July partnership connected Anchorage with Binance for off-exchange settlement. Institutional clients gained the ability to trade on Binance while pledged crypto and U.S. dollar collateral remained in segregated custody through Anchorage’s Atlas platform.
For Frgmnt, the same custody model gives institutions a route into its onchain lending and staking system while keeping asset management within infrastructure they already use.
“Institutional adoption of onchain finance depends on combining access to innovative protocols with the security and operational standards institutions expect,” Anchorage Digital CEO and co-founder Nathan McCauley said.
“Supporting Frgmnt gives our clients another way to access onchain opportunities through trusted institutional infrastructure,” he added.
Anchorage has expanded its stablecoin business
The Frgmnt partnership follows several stablecoin integrations involving Anchorage Digital as the company builds services around issuance, custody and institutional access.
In May, Anchorage Digital began providing regulated custody for CADD, the Canadian dollar stablecoin issued by Tetra Digital Group. CADD is backed one-to-one by Canadian dollars held at a licensed Canadian trust company and was made available for institutional custody through Anchorage.
Anchorage has taken a more direct role with other stablecoins. Western Union launched its USDPT payment stablecoin on Solana in May, with Anchorage Digital Bank serving as the token’s issuer. USDPT is fully backed by U.S. dollars and was designed to operate within Western Union’s payment network.
Earlier in May, McCauley said around 20 partners were exploring stablecoin launches through Anchorage as the company moved away from taking a leading position in the Global Dollar alliance. Anchorage wanted to operate more neutrally while building infrastructure that could serve multiple stablecoin issuers.
Institutional access to stablecoins has expanded outside Anchorage as banks and digital asset infrastructure companies build custody, issuance and settlement services around the asset class. In June, BNY opened direct $USDC access through its Digital Asset Custody platform, allowing institutional clients to mint, redeem, store and transfer the stablecoin within the bank’s infrastructure.
BNY already served as the primary custodian for assets backing $USDC before adding the client-facing services. The bank said at the time that it planned to support more stablecoins and digital cash workflows, although it did not identify which assets would be added next.
Frgmnt deploys fUSD backing into onchain lending markets
Frgmnt takes a different approach from stablecoins designed primarily for payments or settlement because $USDC deposited against fUSD can be deployed into selected lending markets.
The protocol makes its positions and performance metrics available onchain through its own statistics tools and third-party analytics platforms including Dune and DeFiLlama.
Users who mint fUSD can hold the asset or stake it for sfUSD. Rewards attached to sfUSD come from the protocol’s underlying strategies instead of being paid directly to fUSD holders.
Frgmnt has been controlling inflows through capped deposit waves while the protocol scales. According to the company, another deposit wave is scheduled to open in September.
The protocol runs on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network, where native $USDC has been available since September 2023. Circle introduced native $USDC on Base without requiring users to bridge the stablecoin from another blockchain.
Frgmnt uses that $USDC as the asset against which fUSD is minted before deploying backing across the lending markets selected by the protocol.
fUSD and sfUSD functions move inside Anchorage infrastructure
Under the new integration, an institution using Anchorage Digital can move through the fUSD lifecycle from minting to redemption within the same operational environment.
Clients can mint fUSD, hold it in custody and stake it for sfUSD. They can later unstake sfUSD and redeem fUSD without creating a separate custody setup specifically for Frgmnt.
Anchorage Digital serves institutional customers through several regulated entities. Anchorage Digital Bank operates in the U.S. under its federal charter, while Anchorage Digital Singapore is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Anchorage Digital NY holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services.
The company was founded in 2017 and has received funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs, KKR and Visa. Its valuation stands at $4.2 billion, according to the company.
Frgmnt said institutions seeking access to fUSD and sfUSD through the integration can work through their existing Anchorage Digital representative or contact Frgmnt directly.