Zodia Custody, backed by Standard Chartered, Northern Trust and SBI, has attracted several new clients in the past three months. This week it announced a deal with Schroders-backed asset manager Forteus, a crypto specialist and subsidiary of Numeus.
In addition to digital asset custody, Forteus will also access approved third party staking providers through the Zodia Custody Gateway.
Zodia’s new clients include Deutsche Bank’s DWS, ETP issuer ETC Group and alternative fund manager 6 Monks amongst asset managers. Additionally, it inked a deal with Bitcoin minder Marathon Digital and Tokenet for digital asset lending.
Apart from landing new clients, Zodia Custody is also extending its geographic reach. It is regulated in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong and Luxembourg. Zodia Custoddy received its Hong Kong trust license in March, launched services in Australia last year, and is planning a presence in Dubai. In Japan SBI Zodia Custody is a joint venture with SBI, which led its latest funding round.
One of the main aspects of the Forteus deal is access to staking, a rapidly evolving area in the digital asset sector, dominated by Ethereum with a staking market capitalization of around $123 billion. Liquid staking ($57 billion) allows the staked assets to earn additional returns by using them as collateral in DeFi protocols. The latest iteration of staking is Restaking led by EigenLayer with $18.5 billion in locked assets. It allows tokens staked on Ethereum to be additionally staked for other protocols, such as dApps or blockchain bridges. A key advantage for dApp developers is that EigenLayer provides a readymade staking infrastructure.
