Investment professionals are aware of Bitcoin and Ethereum. They are even aware of the various code base forks which seeded new blockchains with their own tweaks and flavors leveraging a UTXO accounting framework or the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). However there is a tremendous amount of value sitting outside of these networks which could benefit market makers, funds, and other investment professionals or service providers which isn’t being well addressed.
At the time of writing, Solana is ranked 5th by market capitalization, it presents the biggest competitor to EVM based chains and at $2 billion total value locked (TVL) it nudges out in front of all Ethereum layer 2 solutions for dollar value on top of the network. A close relation of Solana is Aptos Network and according to Electric Capital’s recent Aptos is the fastest growing and largest Move language ecosystem as well as being a popular non-EVM chain. Another example is the Cosmos ecosystem which connects 95 other Cosmos based blockchains for a market capitalization of $62 billion. These chain launches typically come with private token allocation rounds which are attractive to venture capital funds and their secondary market trading is good business for market makers - and yet custody solutions cannot keep up.
This is not limited to public networks. Banks, asset managers, and fintechs are using the Provenance blockchain to deploy assets on-chain with a stated value of $11 billion currently under administration. Then there are the various pilot programs being coordinated between the financial industry and regulators to explore innovative solutions for the $5.5 Trillion business of asset managers in a way that leverages blockchain technology and smart contracts. These projects are helping with the issuance and full lifecycle of securities on chain as well as tokenization of funds. Collectively, the assets moving on chain will need market infrastructure support and secure technology that works within the perimeter of a customer’s corporate firewall.
So back to the question, are you missing out? A lot of MPC wallets struggle to support networks which are not based off of Bitcoin or Ethereum. As a result, investment professionals and service providers have a choice to make. Take a huge risk and resort to more nimble, but less secure, single key online wallets to facilitate client or proprietary investment activity for these networks. Alternatively, maintain your risk framework and miss out on potentially profitable market opportunities while falling behind your peers. Neither is desirable and better designed tooling that can keep up with the innovation in the market is an imperative to avoid repeat situations such as “Solana Summer” in 2021 where market infrastructure was not ready for the surge in investment activity towards the emerging blockchain.
With Cordial Treasury any network can be added in 1-2 weeks to increase our blockchain support count which stands at around 35 blockchains currently. We are proud to already support Cosmos, Polkadot, Aptos, Sui, Provenance and other ecosystems at the request of our customers. The number of chain launches, both permissionless and permissioned, will only increase as more developers join the space and narratives play out around non-EVM chains, tokenisation of real world assets, and payments on the blockchain. Missing out will become increasingly costly and the lead time for new chain support will be a decisive factor in facilitating new business opportunities for existing customers as they and the market both continue to grow.
