Last Updated: 10 July 2026
Komainu Connect
Institutional investors holding digital assets face a persistent problem. Assets sitting in secure custody cannot simultaneously be working in the market. Komainu Connect helps to resolve that tension. It is a collateral management platform that enables clients to trade, borrow, and lend directly from regulated custody, without pre-funding exchanges or exposing assets to counterparty risk. Understanding how it works, and the legal framework that underpins it, is essential for any institution seeking to make its digital asset capital work harder.
Why it matters
For institutional investors, digital asset allocation has historically required a difficult choice: accept the operational and counterparty risk of moving assets onto exchanges and trading venues, or leave capital sitting idle in custody. Neither option reflects the standards that institutional risk frameworks demand.
The failures of several high-profile centralised venues in recent years have reinforced this concern. Pre-funding exchanges requires placing assets in the custody of a third party, exposing institutions to insolvency risk, operational failure, and a loss of the segregation and control that regulated custody is designed to provide.
Institutional demand for active participation in digital asset markets has grown considerably. Lending, borrowing, trading, and collateralised financing are now core components of institutional digital asset strategies. The question is not whether to participate, but how to do so without abandoning the risk management principles that govern institutional capital. Komainu Connect was built to answer that question.
What Is Komainu Connect?
Komainu Connect is a purpose-built collateral management service that removes the need to move assets off-platform to participate in the market. Assets remain in segregated, on-chain wallets under Komainu’s regulated custody, while clients gain access to a growing network of exchanges, prime brokers, and lending platforms.
The platform is designed around a core principle: custody and market access are not mutually exclusive. By keeping assets within a regulated custody framework and enabling collateral to be posted, mirrored, or pledged to partner venues, Komainu Connect preserves the security and segregation that institutional investors require while removing the operational barriers to active market participation.
Three Principal Use Cases
Komainu Connect supports three distinct use cases, each addressing a different institutional need. Each will be explored in depth in its own dedicated Insights piece.
- Off-Exchange Settlement: Rather than pre-funding an exchange and accepting the counterparty exposure that comes with it, clients can hold assets in Komainu custody and have collateral mirrored to the venue in real time. Trades are executed and settled without assets ever leaving regulated custody, materially reducing the risk of exchange insolvency affecting client positions.
- Tri-Party Agreements: For clients engaged in lending or repo activity, Komainu acts as the independent custodian holding collateral on behalf of both parties to a transaction. The tri-party structure provides legal certainty, operational clarity, and on-chain transparency, giving both sides confidence in the arrangement.
- Prime Broker Connectivity: Institutional clients working with prime brokers can access leverage and liquidity through Komainu’s partner network, with assets remaining in segregated custody throughout. The structure supports the institutional risk management standards that prime brokerage relationships require.
Key Features
- Ecosystem Access: Komainu provides independent custody with seamless integration to a growing list of exchanges, prime brokers, and lending platforms. Current partners include Hidden Road, Deribit, Bybit, OKX, LTP, and Gate.io.
- Capital Efficiency: By keeping assets in secure, segregated, on-chain custody while enabling market participation, clients avoid the inefficiency of idle capital and the risk of pre-funded positions at third-party venues.
- Tokenized Asset Support: The platform supports a range of tokenized assets as collateral, including yield-bearing tokens such as BUIDL, stETH, and USYC. Access liquidity against these positions while assets remain in custody, without surrendering their yield-generating characteristics.
- Robust Legal Framework: The Account Control Agreement integrates legal precision with operational clarity, ensuring secure alignment between Komainu, the client, and partner venues. The framework is designed to provide enforceability and transparency across all parties to a transaction.
- Insolvency Protection: Client assets are held off balance sheet, in bankruptcy-remote, segregated on-chain wallets. This structure prohibits co-mingling of assets and provides a critical layer of protection in the event of a venue insolvency.
- 24/7 Access: Trade, borrow, or lend at any time through our integrated partner network. Real-time collateral mirroring and intra-day settlement intervals ensure clients can act on market opportunities without operational delay.
- Supported Assets: Komainu Connect supports a growing list of digital and tokenized assets for use as collateral, including BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, XRP, SOL, BNB, POL, USDe, stETH, PAXG, USYC, and BUIDL.
Risks and Considerations
- Legal enforceability: The legal treatment of digital asset collateral arrangements continues to evolve across jurisdictions. Institutions should seek appropriate legal advice.
- Partner venue risk: While assets remain in Komainu custody, institutions retain operational dependencies on partner venues for execution, settlement, and collateral mirroring.
- Asset eligibility: Supported collateral types are subject to eligibility criteria and may change over time.
- Settlement intervals: Intra-day settlement intervals apply. Institutions should understand the timing mechanics for their specific use case.
- Regulatory treatment: The classification of collateralised digital asset arrangements varies by jurisdiction and should be assessed within each institution’s compliance framework.
Komainu’s Perspective
Institutional participation in digital asset markets has historically been constrained by a structural problem: custody kept assets safe, but market access required giving that security up. For institutions operating under rigorous risk frameworks, that trade-off was often unacceptable.
Komainu Connect is our response to that problem. By combining regulated, segregated custody with a legally robust collateral management framework, we enable institutions to deploy capital efficiently without accepting the counterparty risk that has defined, and in several notable cases, damaged, the digital asset industry. For us, Connect is not an ancillary service. It is infrastructure, designed to meet the standards that institutional investors bring to every other asset class, and to make digital asset capital work as hard as it can.
Key Takeaways
- Komainu Connect enables trading, borrowing, and lending directly from regulated custody, without pre-funding third-party venues.
- Unlike other collateral solutions, Komainu clients remain the beneficial owner of their collateral. This in combination with segregated collateral wallets gives clients complete transparency on chain of their assets.
- The Account Control Agreement provides a legally robust tripartite framework, with assets held in bankruptcy-remote, on-chain wallets throughout.
- Three use cases, off-exchange settlement, tri-party agreements, and prime broker connectivity, each address distinct institutional needs.
- Supported collateral includes a growing range of digital and tokenized assets, including yield-bearing tokens.
- Komainu Connect is infrastructure, designed to meet the risk management standards institutional investors apply to every other asset class.
What Should Clients Ask?
- How does the Account Control Agreement protect my assets in the event of a partner venue insolvency?
- What rights do exchanges/trading venues have under the Account Control Agreement?
- How does collateral mirroring work in practice, and what are the settlement intervals?
- Which exchanges and prime brokers are currently integrated?
- Which assets are supported as collateral?
- Do you support Tokenized Assets?