Zodia Custody Looks to Drive Institutional Access to Polkadot Ecosystem

Cryptocurrency storage provider Zodia Custody, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered (STAN), is to provide institutional support for the Polkadot blockchain through a new partnership with the network’s developer.

Together with Parity Technologies, the firm plans to provide custody for the Polkadot ecosystem, offering digital asset storage services for financial institutions. The two plan to offer staking of DOT, Polkadot’s native token in order to further expand the network’s reach among institutions.

Zodia Custody is majority owned by multinational bank Standard Chartered and also counts SBI Holdings and Northern Trust among its shareholders, giving it considerable significance in the context of institutional adoption of digital assets. It expanded to Singapore earlier this week.

Polkadot’s DOT token is the 13th biggest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of around $5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. DOT is trading just above $4 at the time of writing, having fallen below the $4 mark for the first time in three years this week as part of a broad sell-off across the altcoin market.