CoinShares, the world’s largest publicly listed digital asset investment firm, is to collaborate with Blockdaemon, the institutional crypto infrastructure provider. Through this partnership, CoinShares and Blockdaemon aim to build staking and blockchain networking infrastructure into its larger trading and asset management platform.
As highlighted in CoinShares’ Q1 2021 Earnings Report, the Group continues to explore ways of upgrading its market infrastructure through strategic investments, thus adding new features, including staking, yield generation, and exposure to new protocols and networks for a wide range of market participants. The partnership with Blockdaemon will assist in accelerating these new capabilities. The two firms will also collaborate on research regarding the evolution of computing, connectivity, and networking costs across various blockchain protocols, and work to develop new financial instruments related to staking and participation in the governance of blockchain networks.
Blockdaemon is the largest independent blockchain infrastructure platform, offering its customers secure, scalable and easy to use solutions for their staking, node infrastructure and development needs across more than 40 blockchains. Blockdaemon’s institutional-grade platform prioritises security and risk mitigation while empowering its customers to enhance their participation in blockchain ecosystems and earn additional yield by staking assets. This capability will be an integral part of Blockdaemon’s relationship with CoinShares. Blockdaemon is staking approximately USD5 billion across multiple blockchains.
Konstantin Richter, CEO of Blockdaemon, comments: “It is clear that institutional investors have a growing interest in digital assets, and require the tools and platforms specifically designed to meet their investment needs. For this reason, we are pleased to collaborate with the CoinShares team as together we help make investing in digital assets a more seamless experience. Their integral approach connecting investors to the emerging digital asset ecosystem can be easily seen through their impressive market growth. We are delighted to support the broader CoinShares Group with secure node infrastructure, staking and monitoring services for their growing business.”
Over the last 12 months, investor interest in digital assets has grown materially. There are now nearly 100 proof of stake protocols with over USD400 billion in market cap, yielding billions per year in staking rewards ranging from 1 per cent to 84 per cent annual yield. Investors are increasingly interested in having products and services that enable them to participate in these opportunities.
The CoinShares Weekly Digital Asset Fund Flows Report, which tracks inflows and outflows into digital asset investment products, highlights this trend. Ethereum ETPs have seen record inflows, and account for USD18 billion global AUM, as of market close on Friday, May 21.
“Through this collaboration, CoinShares will be able to offer investors, traders, and market participants who are net-long digital assets the ability to stake their assets and generate staking yield via a single API integration,” says CoinShares CEO, Jean-Marie Mognetti. “Managing infrastructure can be costly, complex, and slow time to market. Blockdaemon will enable us to orchestrate complex networks across multiple clouds and datacenters without costly and time-consuming overhead, and help us reduce the complexity of staking across multiple blockchain networks while providing us with the high availability and uptime we require across our trading systems.”
The first protocol supported will be Solana, where CoinShares will be operating a node with Blockdaemon’s support, and more protocols will be added in the coming months. CoinShares will be participating in governance across a number of new blockchain protocols as the need for trusted nodes and active participants across various types of networks grows. Blockdaemon will be an integral partner in setting up, maintaining, and upgrading networking infrastructure that supports billions of dollars of assets and transactions, enabling CoinShares to run nodes, deploy testnets and mainnets, and contribute to the progressive decentralisation of these networks over time.
