Softstack partnered with Anchorage Digital to perform Digital Asset Assessments that evaluate token and protocol risk before assets are accepted into institutional custody.

Client: Anchorage Digital

Project: Pre-custody digital asset onboarding

Industry: Institutional custody & digital asset infrastructure

Service: Digital Asset Assessment (multi-chain security and technical due diligence)

The Challenge

Institutional custodians must decide whether a digital asset is safe to support. That decision depends on more than market demand. It requires a clear view of contract security, governance controls, signing and upgrade paths, how custody would interact with the asset, and the risk profile of the underlying chain.

Anchorage Digital engaged Softstack to provide structured technical assessments that inform those onboarding decisions across heterogeneous blockchain ecosystems.

Scope of Work

Softstack’s Digital Asset Assessment for Anchorage Digital covered the full technical surface relevant to custody readiness:

  • Multi-chain smart contract security review across Solidity, Rust, Move, and related ecosystems, focused on issuance, transfer, mint/burn, pause, upgrade, and privilege paths that affect custodian operations.
  • Governance analysis of admin roles, timelocks, councils, and on-chain or off-chain decision processes that can change asset behaviour after listing.
  • Multisignature and key-control review covering signer thresholds, recovery paths, and privileged account design that influence operational risk once assets are held in custody.
  • Custody implementation analysis examining how the asset’s technical model interacts with institutional custody workflows, including deposit, withdrawal, freezing, and emergency controls where applicable.
  • Underlying chain assessment evaluating network maturity, consensus and finality characteristics, tooling support, and infrastructure risks that affect safe custody support.

The goal is consistent: assess the asset before it goes into custody, so onboarding decisions are grounded in technical evidence rather than assumptions.

Why It Matters

For a regulated custodian, supporting a new asset expands the attack surface and operational burden. Weak governance, opaque upgrade rights, brittle multisig setups, or chain-level instability can create outsized risk after listing.

By combining multi-language contract review with governance, custody, and chain analysis, Softstack helps Anchorage Digital evaluate assets with the depth institutional custody requires.

About Softstack

Founded in 2017 (formerly Chainsulting), Softstack is a German Web3 security and software development company specialised in smart contract audits, protocol engineering, and digital asset risk assessments across ecosystems including Ethereum, Solana, Move-based networks, Tezos, and more.

If you need pre-custody or institutional digital asset assessments, reach out at hello@softstack.io or visit softstack.io.