Los Angeles, July 2022 – Blockdaemon, the leading institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure company, has acquired Sepior, a leading data and digital asset security company focused on institutional-grade cryptographic key management and protection. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blockdaemon is committed to streamline the institutional UX when it comes to funding crypto-accounts (on-ramp), managing transaction and data nodes, staking & key management and liquid staking solutions via one non-custodial integration. Integrated key-management weaves the different platform components together, specifically around automated staking/re-staking and bonding/unbonding. This enhances security, ease of use and speed to market for Blockdaemon’s B2B2C customers.
Sepior will further facilitate Blockdaemon’s ability to connect businesses to blockchains with one integration. Following the acquisition, Blockdaemon will add the ability to offer institutional customers custodial and non-custodial wallet solutions for digital assets. Hundreds of institutions now use Sepior’s multi-party computation (MPC) key management and protection technology in their services by either licensing it directly from Sepior or one of Sepior’s channel partners that offer institutional wallets and/or custody platforms. Blockdaemon has seen significant growth across institutional customers and as of Q2 Blockdaemon has nearly doubled that number in less than a year. This milestone marks Blockdaemon’s fourth successful acquisition within two years, following Gem, Anyblock Analytics and Lunie.
Sepior, a pioneer in developing and applying advanced MPC algorithms to real-world problems, solves the ‘single point of failure’ problem that many digital asset management institutions face with private key theft or misuse, which contributed to losses of more than $3.2B in 2021. Sepior’s addition to Blockdaemon’s solution portfolio gives institutions a blockchain-agnostic, custodial or non-custodial, hardware independent solution for private key management use and storage. Sepior’s team is composed of renowned cryptographers and industry veterans that will be joining Blockdaemon’s team as part of the acquisition.
“We are thrilled to bring Sepior into the Blockdaemon family,” said Konstantin Richter, Blockdaemon Founder and CEO. “The ability to properly secure private keys is a cornerstone of the multi-billion dollar institutional crypto finance industry. With this acquisition we are now able to foster the distribution of trust, identity, and privacy of keys at scale.”
“We’re incredibly excited to join forces with Blockdaemon,” said Ahmet Tuncay, former CEO of Sepior and now head of MPC Digital Asset Security at Blockdaemon. “This move allows us to accelerate on-boarding our institutional customers while continuing to invest in our roadmap that uniquely meets their needs in this rapidly changing environment. Integrating advanced MPC into Blockdaemon’s portfolio opens up new use cases for our technology that will allow us to serve our customers with even better digital asset security solutions.”
Konstantin Richter, Blockdaemon Founder and CEO, added, “The Sepior team brings unrivaled research and credentials in MPC technology and will help us continue to build out a robust, feature rich ecosystem with our partners.”
With the addition of Sepior, Blockdaemon institutional clients can now build hot and cold crypto wallet services, protect keys for dApps, and guarantee secure transaction signing.
Blockdaemon is continuously strengthening its product offerings with compliance and security being a primary focus. Sepior’s technology adds a fifth layer to Blockdaemon’s risk mitigation strategy designed to protect institutional clients as they seamlessly connect to the blockchain economy.
“As we continue to grow, Blockdaemon actively strives to enhance our industry-leading technology platform and further improve our offerings for our clients. With our latest acquisition of Sepior, we are bringing in a team of world-renowned security specialists, combined with an innovative, gold-standard security solution, both of which will strongly benefit our clients and the value we deliver. I would like to personally welcome Sepior onto the Blockdaemon team,” said Larry Zhong, Head of Corporate Development at Blockdaemon.
Blockdaemon now adds further value to clients with a complete security-as-a-service product suite of enterprise ready offerings designed to support institutional key management, complementing Blockdaemon’s suite of institutional blockchain infrastructure via its total ‘node stack’ designed to transform any business into a blockchain business by offering the tools to enable firms to start, grow and scale their crypto products and services.
“SBI has believed in Sepior since we invested in them back in 2018,” said Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao, CEO at SBI Digital Asset Holdings. “Their technology has proven to be important to SBI Group in our projects in the rapidly evolving digital asset market. We are proud of their achievements, and we are certain they will bring important contributions to Blockdaemon.”
Galaxy Digital Partners LLC is serving as the exclusive financial advisor and Cooley LLP is acting as legal advisor to Blockdaemon.
