Institutional staking pathways for 2026

Figment and Fireblocks institutional staking

Figment manages over $18 billion in assets under stake. Its partnership with Fireblocks lets institutions use MPC key management to stake on 20+ blockchains. Clients activate staking in minutes through the native Fireblocks UI or via API in 3 to 7 days. This setup keeps assets in existing custody environments. Figment is a non-custodial provider, so it never takes control of client assets. Fireblocks clients can also use the Fireblocks Wallet and Figment App combination to connect through a browser extension. This configuration helps institutions adopt staking at their own pace using workflows suited to their internal systems. Figment provides specialized, institutional-grade staking infrastructure to its customers. The partnership with Fireblocks helps scale with growing market demand. Coinbase Prime and Figment manage over $2 billion in staked assets. Their collaboration supports assets like Solana, Sui, and Avalanche. This relationship handles large-scale products such as Grayscale’s ETH staking ETF.

Coinbase and Kraken yield competition

Coinbase Prime and Figment manage over $2 billion in staked assets. Their assets include Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Avalanche, Cosmos, Polkadot, and NEAR. Coinbase Prime clients manage all staking, trading, and financing in one interface. Kraken Institutional partnered with Upshift to launch permissioned, custom vaults. Upshift raised $10 million in a Series A led by Dragonfly in March 2025. These vaults use receipt tokens in segregated Kraken custody without pooling or rehypothecation. The integration combines Kraken’s qualified custody, prime brokerage, liquidity, execution, and staking with Upshift’s infrastructure. Institutional controls and accounting are at the vault, protocol, chain, and token levels. Upshift is a B2B infrastructure provider that can deploy vaults on dozens of chains. Upshift builds custom, dedicated vaults around a specific client’s strategy, asset mix, liquidity needs, and risk parameters. Clients deploy assets into vetted onchain yield strategies without opening separate wallets or onboarding additional providers. Will the emergence of custom vaults reduce the dominance of generic shared pools?

Kraken self-custody and banking

Kraken Wallet is a mobile-only self-custody tool. It supports 12 networks but lacks native hardware-wallet support. You should avoid using it for large, long-term holdings because the private keys exist on a network-connected phone. Kraken Financial operates as a Wyoming SPDI with a full-reserve model. In March 2026, Kraken Financial secured a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to settle transactions directly on the Fedwire network instead of relying on the services of intermediary correspondent banks. The Kraken and Upshift integration is the best option to access DeFi yield without managing separate wallets or onboarding multiple providers. Kraken Financial holds assets 1:1 and does not pay interest on fiat deposits. Kraken Financial reached a $2.2 billion private valuation in late 2025 and generated $2.2 billion in total revenue during the 2025 fiscal year. This revenue is 33% year-over-year growth. Total platform transaction volume reached $2 trillion. Kraken Financial maintains a VASP license from the UK Financial Conduct Authority and holds MiCA approvals for the European Union. Kraken’s qualified custody has $100 million in insurance coverage and uses SOC 2 Type 2 certified, Wyoming SPDI-licensed cold storage with segregated account structures. Kraken provides deep liquidity and algorithmic execution across Kraken and multiple external venues. Kraken houses physical servers in secure, geographically distributed data centers protected by armed personnel and biometric access controls.