Folkvang is a global quantitative trading firm active across the cryptoasset space, primarily dealing as a market maker on 20+ separate venues.

Trading since 2018, the firm has a sprawling employee base located across the world which provides for many opportunities but, in turn, creates its own unique set of custody problems. With a need for multiple party crypto wallet access and sign-off capabilities, Qredo was able to step in and provide a secure way to streamline operations.

With hundreds of millions of dollars in value traded and moved across venues every day, Folkvang wanted a custody solution which would give them a secure platform to access markets across the DeFi and CeFi universe — and at a sustainable cost, too.

The firm now uses Qredo as their base custody layer and its MetaMask Institutional integration to trade a vast array of cryptoassets while retaining a secure and streamlined workflow.

Lending Custody

Folkvang initially began to explore DeFi custody solutions after onboarding to the Clearpool lending platform. They needed a self custodial crypto wallet with strong DeFi properties to access the clearpool DeFi markets.

“It is an absolute requirement that firms have strong self custodial infrastructure in place to capture all the core benefits of DeFi’s offerings,” says Dan Burke, Head of APAC at Qredo.

As a large decentralized finance marketplace, Clearpool allows the fund to access crypto capital markets, but they needed a connecting custody platform suitable for a fast-moving strategy and strong distributed security properties.

Through Qredo, Folkvang retains its primary connection point with the protocol through the MetaMask Institutional integration, while adding multi-party computation security for securing the L1 assets, approving trades, and minimal latency to the settlement time.

Folkvang partner Jeff Anderson said that Qredo provided an “eloquent and simple solution” to the firm’s requirements.

“Out of the current custody solutions on the market, Qredo offered the best solution for us as a quantitative trading firm."

“It’s the easiest to use if you are a fast trading firm; the most trustless, decentralized, open source platform.”

Why Qredo

As a remote-first company, it’s crucial that Folkvang custodies its assets with a provider that can guarantee its security and offers seamless access to trading.

“Qredo’s distributed MPC and on-chain governance gives a remote team like Folkvang the peace of mind that their assets are both secure and globally accessible 24/7 at a moment’s notice,” Burke says.

“They are facing no vendor performance risk in accessing their assets or enforcing their policies, and that’s why Qredo is the preferred choice for fast moving and security conscious firms like Folkvang.”

With Qredo, the fund can trade any asset on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with its DeFi trading book, with a market-leading price structure which facilitates the active approach of Folkvang.

Anderson said the security of Qredo’s decentralized Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and ease of use were key benefits compared to other platforms on the market.

“The Folkvang team is based all over the world, and security is key, so Qredo alleviates a lot of the custody concerns we have had.”

“Qredo is nimble and fast. It’s easy to scale up and down fast with new people and add more assets on the network,” he said.

“The decentralized custody can guarantee against rehypothecation, wider attack surface and other threats. But, it’s also decentralized with Qredo’s support — there is a customer service aspect there, and that’s a massive plus for us.”