The Cost of Fragmented Institutional Gateway Infrastructure

A hedge fund using Coinbase Custody, Fireblocks, and Anchorage must replicate KYC, whitelisting, and compliance workflows for each. This creates ~3-6 month onboarding delays and duplicate audit trails.

• Manual Reconciliation: Balances and transaction histories are siloed per custodian.
• Operational Risk: Security policies and API integrations differ, increasing attack surface.

A DAO managing assets on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Solana uses separate tools for each: Gnosis Safe, Squads, and Safe{Wallet}. Executing a simple rebalance requires three separate multisig sessions.

• Fragmented Governance: Each chain requires its own delegate set and transaction signing.
• Siloed Liquidity: Idle capital sits on individual chains, unable to be aggregated for yield.

A trading firm interacts with dYdX, Aave, GMX, and Uniswap via direct contract calls, each with unique rate limits, gas strategies, and risk parameters. This leads to suboptimal execution and hidden costs.

• Latency Arbitrage: Slow, sequential calls across protocols miss optimal pricing.
• Gas Inefficiency: No cross-protocol bundling results in ~30-50% higher gas costs on net.

Institutions must maintain separate accounts across Coinbase Prime, BitGo, and Anchorage, each with its own API, compliance overhead, and 7-14 day settlement cycles. This locks capital and creates reconciliation hell.\n- Operational Drag: Manual reconciliation across silos costs ~50+ FTE hours/month for a mid-sized fund.\n- Counterparty Risk: Funds are immobilized, unable to seize cross-chain or DeFi opportunities.

Trading large blocks requires negotiating with multiple OTC desks (Genesis, Galaxy, FalconX) for best execution, leaking intent and paying 20-50 bps in spread. There's no consolidated liquidity view or standardized post-trade reporting.\n- Information Leakage: RFQs signal market moves, impacting fill price.\n- Regulatory Fog: Audit trails are scattered, complicating MiFID II / SEC compliance.

A single platform integrating custody, liquidity aggregation, and cross-chain settlement—think Coinbase Prime meets Fireblocks meets 1inch Pro. This abstracts away fragmentation.\n- Atomic Settlement: Move from custodial silos to <1 hr cross-chain finality via intents.\n- Best Execution: Aggregate quotes from Coinbase, Binance, and UniswapX in one RFQ, slashing spreads.

Embedding compliance (Travel Rule, OFAC screening, KYC) directly into the gateway's transaction layer, not as a bolt-on. Uses zero-knowledge proofs for privacy-preserving verification.\n- Automated On-Chain Policy: Enforce fund-specific rules (e.g., "no Tornado Cash") at the RPC level.\n- Audit-in-a-Box: Generate unified reports for auditors and regulators from a single source of truth.

Fiat-to-crypto entry is a patchwork of banking partners (Silvergate, Signature), payment processors (MoonPay, Ramp), and regional licenses. Each layer adds 1-3% in fees and 2-5 day delays.\n- Hidden Costs: FX spreads, wire fees, and failed ACH returns erode allocations.\n- Geographic Arbitrage: Inconsistent availability creates arbitrage for gatekeepers.

Bypass aggregators by connecting institutional bank accounts directly to decentralized liquidity pools via a licensed, compliant bridge. Enables institutional intents.\n- Capital Efficiency: Use bank balances as collateral for minting USDC or other stable assets directly on-chain.\n- Regulatory First: Built with MiCA and state-level MTLs in mind, not retrofitted.