How Kraken Institutional clients can access onchain yield from within custody

Kraken Institutional has partnered with Upshift to launch custom, permissioned vaults that let eligible clients put idle treasury assets to work in curated onchain strategies, directly from qualified custody.

For most institutions, custody has been the end of the line for their digital assets. Coins are held securely, and then they sit there. Earning onchain yield has traditionally meant standing up new wallets, onboarding additional providers, and building the machinery to coordinate centralized and onchain activity, a cost that has kept a large share of institutional capital idle.

That trade-off is what the Kraken Institutional and Upshift integration is built to remove. Eligible Kraken Institutional clients can now deploy into permissioned, curated onchain vaults directly from Kraken's qualified custody solution, using the relationship and the controls they already have in place.

What Kraken Institutional and Upshift are launching

Through the integration, institutions can allocate assets into Institutional Vaults from their existing custody accounts. Upshift provides the vault infrastructure, and Kraken provides the qualified custody, liquidity, execution and financing around it. The result is a single institutional relationship that spans secure custody and productive onchain yield.

Upshift is a multi-chain, multi-protocol vault infrastructure provider used by wallets, exchanges, neobanks and asset managers to launch custom yield products. The platform has processed more than $550 million in deposits at peak across over 50 vaults on more than 30 chains, and its contracts have been through 10 smart contract audits by 6 independent firms. Upshift raised a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly in March 2025.

How the integration works

For onchain allocations, the underlying asset is deployed to selected vault contracts, and a receipt token representing the position is returned to the client's segregated Kraken qualified custody account. That receipt token is not pooled or rehypothecated. It is reflected at its redeemable underlying value on the custody statement, so clients keep clear visibility into what they can withdraw at any time.

Institutional controls and accounting are maintained throughout, at the vault, protocol, chain and token level. The permissions, approvals and reporting a client already runs through Kraken carry over, so activating assets never means giving up the guardrails that govern them.

Custom vaults built around each client

Instead of routing every client into the same generic pool, Upshift builds dedicated vaults around a specific client's strategy, asset mix, liquidity needs and risk parameters. Kraken and Upshift work with a curated group of vetted, professional vault curators across DeFi, CeFi, PayFi and real-world-asset strategies, with more curators to be announced.

The stack behind every vault

Idle stablecoin, ETH or BTC held through Kraken Institutional can become the starting point for a broader deployment strategy. Kraken pairs qualified custody with prime brokerage and financing, deep liquidity and execution, and staking and settlement, so clients can move across exchange, OTC and onchain markets without unwinding positions or leaving the platform. Upshift's vault infrastructure is the piece that turns those balances into curated onchain yield.

What this unlocks for institutions

The integration gives eligible clients one access point for curated DeFi yield alongside centralized strategies, liquidity, credit and bespoke OTC opportunities. Assets already held with Kraken can be activated in place, with the client's own risk parameters and reporting preserved, and without a separate operating stack to run.

"Institutions have long faced a trade-off between secure custody and putting funds to work. Kraken and Upshift remove the operational overhead of sourcing yield efficiently across exchange, OTC and onchain markets that have kept capital idle. Kraken pairs qualified custody with a full set of prime services, while Upshift provides the vault infrastructure to put assets to work. Together, clients can generate yield without spinning up new wallets, counterparties or protocols, while maintaining rigorous risk management built in." - Aya Kantorovich, CEO and Co-Founder of Upshift

"Custody should be the starting point for what institutions can do with their assets, not the ending point. Vaults are the next step in making Kraken Custody the most productive place for institutional capital to sit." - Gregory Barasia, Head of Asset Management, Kraken Institutional

The direction of travel is clear. As more institutions look for yield on the assets they already hold, the vault becomes the wrapper that makes any balance productive, and custody becomes a place to start from rather than a place capital goes to sit. Kraken Institutional is the first major custodian to bring that model to its clients through Upshift, and the roadmap runs across stablecoins, ETH, BTC and the strategies beyond them.

‍
About Upshift

Upshift is a leading multi-chain, multi-protocol vault provider that has been tapped by a number of wallets, exchanges and neobanks to launch custom vaults. Upshift is notably the core vault provider for Solana, Stellar and soon Ripple native, and reached $550M TVL at peak last year across 40+ vaults.

Professional curators use Upshift to launch products spanning DeFi and CeFi yield-generation, PayFi solutions, and RWA redemption facilities on 30+ chains. The infrastructure enforces TradFi-grade risk controls and accounting at the protocol, chain, and token levels. Upshift raised a $10M Series A led by Dragonfly in March 2025 and emerged from stealth in April 2025.

Learn more at upshift.finance.