Aegis Trust Company and Coinbase Cloud deliver institutional-grade staking and custodying for Evmos and Avalanche

August 23, 2022

Aegis Trust Company is a U.S.-based, licensed and insured custodian under the Division of Banking in South Dakota that provides institutional-grade digital asset custody services to their clients around the world. Coinbase Cloud is powering Aegis Trust Company’s institutional-grade staking on Evmos and Avalanche, two EVM-compatible protocols that have seen a growing user base and developer community.

Challenge: Limited options for institutional-grade staking through regulated custody

Growing numbers of enterprises and institutions are looking to participate in web3 to earn rewards on their tokens, discover new use cases, and participate actively in networks. As sophisticated investors and entities enter the space, along with newly developed protocols, the need for institutional custody and staking coverage across an expanding list of protocols is growing. Enterprises, institutions, and large token holders frequently require a licensed and regulated  custodian to store their digital assets in a secure and compliant manner. Enabling this combined capability is a key primitive that is necessary to unlock greater institutional participation in emerging protocols and web3. 

Solution: A comprehensive, institutional-grade custody and staking solution

Institutional-grade staking requires two key components to facilitate the process end-to-end: a custodian to post staking transactions and secure, reliable staking infrastructure. Coinbase Cloud provides fully-managed, non-custodial staking infrastructure services, which enables any custody solution to stake to secure validator nodes to earn rewards.

Aegis Trust Company relies on Coinbase Cloud’s validator infrastructure to enable institutional-grade staking and custody on Evmos and Avalanche. Enterprises and institutions can store their EVMOS and AVAX through Aegis Trust Company, and stake from that custody solution with infrastructure powered by Coinbase Cloud.

Coinbase Cloud’s infrastructure is designed to minimize the risk of downtime and double-signing, and offers enterprise-grade security. Token holders have flexibility to choose the staking solution that fits their needs in the best way. They can delegate to a public validator run by Coinbase Cloud, or have Coinbase Cloud run a dedicated validator on their behalf. 

Enabling staking through custody solutions is not an easy task – it requires product and engineering build resources. By working with Coinbase Cloud, Aegis Trust Company can offload the complexities of protocol upgrades and validator management to an experienced staking provider. 

Serra Wei, founder & CEO of Aegis says, “Lack of suitable custody solutions is often a barrier for institutions and enterprises to participate in web3. Aegis Trust Company aims to eliminate that barrier by enabling the long tail token coverage in custodial services and help unlock new opportunities in web3. Coinbase Cloud shares the same understanding of the needs of regulated businesses, and offers deep protocol expertise and industry-leading security. We are excited to broaden participation in developing ecosystems by working with reliable staking providers.”

“We’re thrilled to have Coinbase Cloud and Aegis offer a custody and staking solution, providing peace of mind to enterprises and institutions that aim to help secure the Evmos network,” said Liam, Head of Business Development at Evmos.

Enabling institutional participation in growing web3 ecosystems

With Coinbase Cloud and Aegis, customers can participate in the growing Evmos and Avalanche ecosystems, earn rewards, and help the networks grow and scale for new use cases.

Evmos is a protocol providing a platform for EVM-based applications to interoperate with the Cosmos ecosystem, including the Cosmos Hub, the Crypto.org Chain, Osmosis, and many more. Accelerated by the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol and soon bringing native interchain composability with Interchain Accounts, the Cosmos ecosystem is quickly becoming one of the largest, most active blockchain ecosystems. On Evmos, builders can develop and deploy apps in an EVM environment, which will be able to interact with the rest of the Interchain ecosystem, contributing to the growth of web3 as a whole and unlocking new possibilities and use cases.

Avalanche is a high-speed smart contract platform with fast finality and EVM support. Developers building on Ethereum, the pioneer smart contract platform with the largest developer community, can easily port their applications and work with Avalanche. For developers, Avalanche offers a number of benefits including less than one second transaction finality; exceptionally high transaction-throughput (in part enabled by the creation of Subnets, a subset of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of one or more blockchains); and proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, enabling greater energy efficiency.  Developers looking for customizable solutions can launch their dapp on its own Subnet, ensuring that their dapp doesn’t have to compete with others for network resources.

To find out more about the comprehensive staking and custody solution for Evmos and Avalanche, get in touch with our team.

This document and the information contained herein is not a recommendation or endorsement of any digital asset, protocol, network, or project. However, Coinbase may have, or may in the future have, a significant financial interest in, and may receive compensation for services related to one or more of the digital assets, protocols, networks, entities, projects, and/or ventures discussed herein. The risk of loss in cryptocurrency, including staking, can be substantial and nothing herein is intended to be a guarantee against the possibility of loss. Reward rates listed herein are estimates, are not guaranteed and are set by the protocol and remain subject to change. Actual rate of rewards earned may vary significantly and may be zero. This document and the content contained herein are based on information which is believed to be reliable and has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but Coinbase makes no representation or warranty, express, or implied, as to the fairness, accuracy, adequacy, reasonableness, or completeness of such information, and, without limiting the foregoing or anything else in this disclaimer, all information provided herein is subject to modification by the underlying protocol network. Any use of Coinbase’s services may be contingent on completion of Coinbase’s onboarding process and is Coinbase’s sole discretion, including entrance into applicable legal documentation and will be, at all times, subject to and governed by Coinbase’s policies, including without limitation, its terms of service and privacy policy, as may be amended from time to time.