The Vault launches SaaS custody with MPC cryptography for institutions
The Vault, a Swiss and EU-regulated digital asset infrastructure provider, has launched a fully cloud-delivered version of its institutional custody engine, extending the same threshold multi-party computation (MPC) cryptography and hardware-isolated signing found in its on-premise deployments to a subscription SaaS model priced on fixed fees rather than percentage-of-assets-under-custody charges.
The move targets a recognised bottleneck in institutional digital asset adoption: the binary choice between ceding control to a third-party custodian and absorbing the months-long cost of an on-premise build. The Vault's SaaS Custody is available immediately and carries a contractual right to migrate the entire setup to hybrid or fully on-premise at any time, with no re-implementation and no new key ceremony required.
Architecture designed to resist insider risk
The technical design of the platform centres on a point that has repeatedly tripped up institutional custody deployments: the moment a human authorises a transaction. Private keys are split into shares using proprietary threshold MPC developed by The Vault's in-house research team and are never assembled in a single location. Signing executes inside trusted execution environments (TEEs, hardware-isolated enclaves out of reach of the host operating system) and a regulated co-signer sits in the quorum on every transaction movement, meaning no single party, including The Vault itself, can unilaterally move or freeze client assets.
The platform also replaces the conventional desktop session or shared hardware token with a hardened mobile signer that makes each approver an independent participant in the quorum from their own device. Every action is cryptographically bound to the session that created it, with device-integrity checks completing before any sensitive process executes. That design addresses what the company describes as the real concentration point of institutional treasury risk: human authorisation.
"Institutions have been asked to choose between moving quickly on someone else's infrastructure and moving slowly on their own," said Artem Stopnevich, CEO of The Vault. "SaaS Custody uses the same MPC engine, the same TEE-isolated signing and the same co-signer quorum as our on-premise product. A client can be live this month and can take the whole setup in-house on the day their board or their regulator asks for it."
Convergence of cryptography, regulated finance and institutional capital
The launch sits at a meaningful intersection of cryptographic infrastructure and the broader institutionalisation of digital assets. For cross-sector investors, the SaaS pricing model matters as much as the cryptographic design. Fixed-fee custody pricing removes the percentage-drag that has made large corporate treasuries and sovereign-adjacent family offices reluctant to move significant balances onto digital-asset rails, and it pulls The Vault's offering closer to how institutional prime-brokerage infrastructure is typically priced in traditional finance.
The integration roadmap also signals a widening perimeter of what institutions can execute without ever removing assets from custody. In June 2026 the platform added confidential stablecoin settlement via Hinkal's privacy smart contracts. In July it embedded non-custodial Ethereum and TRON staking through P2P.org's validators, and launched an independent security validation programme with the blockchain security firm Halborn. Collectively these integrations position the custody layer as an operating platform rather than a static vault, a shift with direct implications for how asset managers and payment providers calculate treasury yield on otherwise idle digital holdings.
For capital allocators watching regulated digital-asset infrastructure, the competitive landscape is consolidating around a handful of models: full-service third-party custodians (Fireblocks, BitGo), bank-grade self-custody tooling, and the hybrid-portable model The Vault is promoting. Regulatory pressure in both Switzerland and the EU under MiCA (the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation) is accelerating demand for custody solutions that can satisfy internal governance requirements without locking institutions into a single vendor's infrastructure. The Vault's contractual portability guarantee is as much a regulatory positioning play as a technical feature, offering compliance teams a credible answer to concentration risk in vendor dependency.