SAN FRANCISCO - February 19, 2026 - Bitwise Asset Management, the global crypto asset manager with over $15 billion in client assets, today announced the acquisition of Chorus One, a leading institutional staking provider with over $2.2 billion in staked assets.
Chorus One has joined Bitwise Onchain Solutions (“BOS”), the staking division of Bitwise, which supports several billion dollars in staked crypto assets. BOS primarily serves institutional investors, family offices, and financial platforms that value the combination of Bitwise’s fiduciary approach, track record of reliability, and native technical expertise. The acquisition accelerates BOS’s capabilities, including:
“For our thousands of clients who hold spot crypto assets, staking is one of the most compelling growth opportunities,” said Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley. “I’m thrilled about this acquisition and grateful to the Chorus One team for the trust placed in us. Chorus One is best-in-class across technology and research, with an eight-year track record of doing things the right way. We’re excited to add their capabilities to the value that Bitwise Onchain Solutions can create for clients.”
Since its inception in 2018, Chorus One’s team of infrastructure experts and researchers has earned the trust of a global client base, including family offices, high-net-worth individuals, funds, traditional financial institutions, exchanges, custodians, and decentralized protocols.
“The Chorus One team shares our commitment to technical rigor, open-source contribution, and deep research,” said Bitwise Chief Technology Officer Hong Kim. “With the foundation of Bitwise Onchain Solutions already in place, the integration of Chorus One will be a massive leap forward in our capabilities to serve clients and our commitment to industry-leading infrastructure and research.”
“Chorus One was built on the idea that investors deserve secure, professional access to the entire Proof-of-Stake landscape,” said Chorus One CEO and Co-founder Brian Crain. “We started with a belief that Proof-of-Stake would become the foundation of the digital economy. As we’ve grown to support over 30 networks, our core focus has always been on reliability, security, and performance. Joining Bitwise is a natural evolution; they share our DNA of excellence and our focus on meeting the sophisticated needs of investors. We’re thrilled to continue building the future of the onchain economy as part of this world-class firm.”
The core Chorus One team will join Bitwise, while Crain will join in an advisory role. With this deal, Bitwise now has nearly 200 employees worldwide, further solidifying its position as a dominant force in the digital asset space.
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods - A Stifel Company (KBW) served as exclusive financial advisor to Chorus One for this acquisition.
About Bitwise
Bitwise Asset Management is a global crypto asset manager with more than $15 billion in client assets and a suite of over 40 investment products spanning ETFs, separately managed accounts, private funds, hedge fund strategies, and staking. The firm has an eight-year track record and today serves more than 5,000 private wealth teams, RIAs, family offices, and institutional investors, as well as 21 banks and broker-dealers. The Bitwise team of nearly 200 technology and investment professionals is backed by leading institutional investors and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
Lido v3 represents the most meaningful architectural shift in Lido’s history. Rather than simply improving liquid staking mechanics, it introduces a modular vault-based framework that fundamentally reshapes how staking interacts with DeFi. For institutions in particular, Lido v3 opens the door to configurable staking, operator choice, and native integration with on-chain strategies, all while preserving custody and control.
At Chorus One, we have been exploring the Lido v3 architecture, including building a proof-of-concept leveraged staking strategy using Morpho. This article is a technical walkthrough of Lido Vault Strategies: how they work, why they matter, and what they unlock for sophisticated stakers.
Lido v3 introduces stVaults, a new primitive that decouples staking infrastructure from token issuance and DeFi usage. At a high level, Lido v3 complements Lido Core Protocol with a layered architecture composed of three core components..
At the base is the Lido v3 protocol itself, which handles validator management, accounting, and withdrawals. On top of that sits the stVault, a vault contract deployed and operated by a specific node operator. Importantly, each stVault accepts stake from a single address only – a deliberate design choice that enables operator selection and simplifies accounting.
To enable multiple users to access the same vault, Lido introduces a DeFi Wrapper. This wrapper aggregates deposits from many users and interacts with the stVault on their behalf. When no strategy is applied, users can stake through the wrapper and receive staking exposure without any additional DeFi logic.
The shift to stVaults is not just a technical upgrade – it is a structural change that directly addresses institutional requirements.
First, stVaults allow stakers to choose their staking partner. Unlike today’s pooled Lido model, where stake is distributed across operators by the protocol, institutions using stVaults can
Explicitly select the validator they trust and align with their compliance and operational requirements.
Second, Lido v3 enables staking without minting. Institutions are no longer forced to hold liquid staking tokens on their balance sheet, eliminating accounting and custody complications while retaining full staking exposure.
Third, when minting is desired, vaults support direct minting of wstETH, removing the need for additional swaps before entering DeFi. This small design choice has meaningful implications for efficiency, gas costs, and operational simplicity.
Finally, stVaults introduce a clean interface for custom staking strategies, enabling staking and DeFi interactions to be composed into a single, auditable workflow.
Lido Vault Strategies are optional smart contract layers placed in front of the DeFi Wrapper. Instead of interacting with the wrapper directly, users interact with the strategy contract, which orchestrates staking, minting, borrowing, and rebalancing logic on their behalf.
This design allows users to access additional on-chain opportunities, such as lending, liquidity provision, or structured yield strategies, without managing multiple contracts or transactions
themselves. Importantly, strategies are not required: a vault can operate purely as a staking vehicle. When added, however, strategies become the mechanism that enables more advanced capital usage while preserving Lido’s core security guarantees.
One of the most important implications of Lido v3 is how it simplifies connecting staking to existing DeFi venues. Protocols like Morpho have become key on-chain destinations for capital, including for crypto-native funds and increasingly for TradFi-linked participants seeking lending and borrowing exposure using assets like USDC.
What these venues generally lack is direct access to staking. Large financial institutions are comfortable with lending and collateralized borrowing, but staking remains unfamiliar territory.
Lido Vaults change this dynamic. By starting upstream with staking and flowing downstream into DeFi, vault strategies provide a natural bridge: participants already active in lending markets can begin to understand staking not as a separate activity, but as an integrated source of yield and collateral. Over time, this structure lowers the conceptual barrier to staking for institutions that otherwise would not engage with it directly.
To understand the practical implications of Vault Strategies, Chorus One built an early-stage proof-of-concept leveraged staking strategy using Lido v3 and Morpho.
What is leveraged staking? Leveraged staking involves borrowing ETH against staked collateral (wstETH) and restaking the borrowed ETH to amplify staking rewards. Traditionally, this requires looping: stake, mint, borrow, restake. Lido v3 however, enables a far cleaner, less complex approach.
Using a strategy contract and Morpho’s callback architecture, we were able to design a flow where users can enter a leveraged position in a single transaction, at any target leverage level, without looping. Gas costs remain constant regardless of leverage, and contract complexity is reduced significantly.
Equally important is the exit path. One of the hardest problems in leveraged staking is unwinding positions during withdrawals. Lido v3 introduces a withdrawal-with-rebalancing feature that allows the loan to be repaid and the withdrawal to be requested in the same transaction. This means positions can be unwound immediately, without waiting days in the withdrawal queue while a loan remains outstanding.
From a technical perspective, this combination – strategy contracts, Morpho callbacks, and Lido’s rebalancing withdrawals – makes leveraged staking both capital and operationally more efficient than previous designs.
Building the strategy contract itself was feasible using largely off-the-shelf components. Lido v3 is highly composable by design, the rebalancing feature, and Morpho’s callback architecture significantly simplifies both entry and exit flows.
However, the most important lesson was that contract development is only a fraction of the work required to build an institutional-grade vault strategy.
Robust products require published risk analysis covering every protocol and asset involved, risk controls embedded directly into contracts and operational workflows, thoughtful financial structuring for downside protection, real-time monitoring with alerting and emergency procedures. They also require active financial operations, including fund rebalancing and emergency unwinds when market conditions demand it.
Recent DeFi vault failures have shown that technical sophistication alone is insufficient. Many curators can build contracts that work when conditions are favorable, but lack the risk discipline needed to operate through stress events. This is where infrastructure providers must differentiate themselves.
Lido v3 stVaults are not just a new staking interface — they are an invitation for operators to step into an active role with more visibility and responsibility. Operators are no longer anonymous infrastructure providers; they become integral participants in how staking and DeFi strategies are designed, operated, and risk-managed.
For Chorus One, this aligns closely with how we already operate across other ecosystems. As a SOC 2-compliant, ISO 27001-certified provider based in Switzerland, we see Lido v3 as a natural evolution of institutional staking rather than a departure from it.
Lido v3 stVaults are expected to launch in 2026. When they do, staking will no longer be a terminal activity: it will be the first step into programmable, risk-managed DeFi strategies that can be accessed in a single transaction.
DeFi is going institutional, and that transition starts with staking. With Lido v3, users no longer need to choose between staking yield and DeFi participation. They can have both – cleanly, transparently, and with operator accountability.
At Chorus One, we are excited to bring these strategies to market, beginning with public vaults and expanding to private, customized deployments. If you are interested in exploring Lido Vault Strategies or learning how they can be tailored to your needs, we would be glad to continue the conversation.
Chorus One, one of the world’s leading institutional staking providers, today announced a new collaboration with Ledger, the world leader in digital asset security for consumers and enterprises, through its Ledger Enterprise platform. Through this collaboration, institutions can participate in Proof-of-Stake networks without transferring custody of their digital assets, while benefiting from Chorus One’s secure, research-backed staking operations.
“Institutions need staking solutions that match their security, compliance, and operational requirements. Integrating with Ledger Enterprise allows us to deliver a streamlined staking experience that keeps governance firmly in the hands of the client while providing the performance and reliability Chorus One is known for.” - Damien Scanlon, Chief Product Officer at Chorus One.
“Companies are adopting digital assets at a rapid pace worldwide, but uncompromising security and governance remain fundamental prerequisites. By integrating Chorus One’s staking infrastructure into the Ledger Enterprise platform, we make it simpler for institutions to earn staking yields with security and governance. This partnership delivers the best of both worlds: high-performance staking combined with robust self-custody.” - Sébastien Badault, Executive Vice President, Ledger Enterprise
The Ledger Enterprise platform provides hardware-secured private key protection, policy-based governance, multi-authorization workflows, and comprehensive auditability. This integration allows staking operations, including delegation and reward management, to occur entirely within the institution’s existing governance framework.
This connection expands Chorus One’s global footprint across institutional staking and strengthens Ledger Enterprise’s offering as a governance-focused, end-to-end digital asset management platform.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the largest institutional staking providers globally, operating infrastructure for over 40 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, including Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, and Near. Since 2018, the company has been at the forefront of the PoS industry, offering easy-to-use, enterprise-grade staking solutions, conducting industry-leading research, and investing in innovative protocols through Chorus One Ventures. Chorus One is an ISO27001 certified provider for institutional digital asset staking.
About Ledger
Celebrating its 10 year anniversary in 2024, Ledger is the world leader in Digital Asset security for consumers and enterprises. Ledger offers connected devices and platforms, with more than 8M devices sold to consumers in 165+ countries and 10+ languages, 100+ financial institutions and commercial brands. Over 20% of the world’s crypto assets are secured by Ledger.
Ledger is the digital asset solution secure by design. The world’s most internationally respected offensive security team, Ledger Donjon, is relied upon as a crucial resource for securing the world of Digital Assets. With over 14 billion dollars hacked, scammed or mismanaged in 2023 alone, Ledger’s security brings peace of mind and uncompromising self-custody to its community.
Don’t buy “a hardware wallet.” Buy a LEDGER™ signer.
LEDGER™, LEDGER WALLET™, LEDGER RECOVER™, LEDGER STAX™, LEDGER FLEX™ and LEDGER NANO™ are trademarks owned by Ledger SAS
Bluetooth® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Ledger is under license.
E Ink® is a registered trademark of E Ink Corporation.
We would like to extend our congratulations to Monad on the successful steps toward its mainnet launch – a milestone that marks the beginning of a new era for high-performance, Ethereum-compatible infrastructure. As the ecosystem prepares for this next chapter, we are excited to announce a new integration with Bitget, one of the world’s leading universal exchanges (UEX), to make Monad (MON) staking accessible to users across global markets.
This collaboration brings together Monad’s breakthrough execution architecture, Bitget’s global reach of 120M users, and Chorus One’s institutional-grade staking expertise, creating a seamless, secure, and highly scalable gateway for early participation in the Monad network.
Monad’s design introduces a leap in execution performance, pairing parallelized transaction processing with MonadBFT consensus to deliver low-latency, high-throughput computation while maintaining full EVM compatibility. As anticipation builds for mainnet, demand for safe, transparent, and reliable staking pathways continues to grow.
However, during Monad’s initial phase, direct staking will be limited, and access will occur primarily through trusted partners. This is where the Chorus One and Bitget integration plays a critical role: it ensures that users can enter the ecosystem through an interface they already trust, backed by infrastructure built for institutional reliability.
Through this integration, Bitget users will gain access to MON staking via Chorus One’s validator infrastructure, benefitting from:
Bitget will route staking operations to Chorus One’s infrastructure, ensuring that delegators participate through a highly resilient validator with a multi-year track record of zero slashing events across 40+ networks.
Staking rewards will be displayed directly within Bitget’s interface, offering a streamlined experience for users who prefer not to manage on-chain delegation flows themselves.
As Monad does not auto-compound staking rewards, users will have the option to manually compound earnings through Bitget’s interface or other integrated tools. This gives full control over reward management while preserving opportunities for optimized yield strategies.
With Bitget’s strong presence in APAC, Europe, and emerging markets, the partnership ensures broad accessibility to MON staking from day one, especially for users who may not otherwise have access to early delegation options.
Complementing the staking integration, Bitget has also launched the MON On-Chain Earn product on November 30. This offering provides users with an accessible way to participate in Monad’s on-chain economy. Users can easily join through Bitget’s dedicated On-Chain Earn interface and start earning on their MON holdings. Click here to join the campaign now!
At Chorus One, our mission is to empower participation in next-generation decentralized protocols through:
For the Bitget integration, we provide infrastructure with continued monitoring, optimization, and reporting to ensure a smooth delegation experience as the ecosystem matures.
Bitget’s influence as a global universal exchange, combined with Chorus One's proven validator track record, helps strengthen the foundation of the Monad network even before its full launch. By lowering the barrier to entry and offering a compliant, scalable on-ramp, this integration helps ensure the validator set grows in decentralization, stability, and geographic diversity.
And as Monad prepares to introduce its high-performance EVM to the world, expanding staking accessibility is a crucial part of building a resilient and secure network from day one.
Monad’s arrival represents a transformative moment for the EVM ecosystem, delivering performance gains without sacrificing compatibility or developer experience. The integration between Chorus One and Bitget is only the first step in a long-term commitment to supporting the network with high-quality staking infrastructure, research insights, and ecosystem collaboration.
We’re proud to contribute to Monad’s journey, and equally proud to help users around the world participate safely and effectively in its early stages.
If you’re a platform, wallet, or institution looking to enable MON staking, our team is ready to support your integration.
Contact us to learn more about partnering with Chorus One for Monad staking.
Amid ongoing efforts to improve scalability and performance in the blockchain industry, Monad - a new EVM-compatible Layer-1 network has been gaining traction. Designed around parallel execution and a unique MonadBFT consensus mechanism, Monad delivers lightning-fast throughput, minimal latency, and the security guarantees needed for global on-chain finance: all while staying fully compatible with Ethereum’s smart contract ecosystem.
At Chorus One, we’re proud to join the Monad validator set from day one. Our goal is to empower both developers and institutions to participate in the network confidently, with reliable staking infrastructure, intuitive tools, and enterprise-grade integrations.
Monad is a high-performance blockchain built to extend Ethereum’s capabilities without sacrificing familiarity. Its architecture introduces parallel transaction execution, allowing multiple smart contracts to process simultaneously — a major leap beyond Ethereum’s single-threaded execution model. This means faster transaction finality, better scalability, and significantly improved user experience.
Monad mainnet is expected to launch next MON-day, November 24th, with projected staking rewards of around 8–12% annualized yield. By design Monad does not auto-compound rewards and requires users to claim or compound rewards manually after each epoch.
As MON rewards will not auto-compound. Users must actively “Compound” stake to maximize rewards.
Realizing that this step may result in some users leaving rewards unrealized, Chorus One has built one-click compounding in the staking dApp enabling easy compounding for reward maximization.
Why is compounding important?
Like with any investment, compounding means taking the rewards earned and reallocating them to maximize the reward rate. In staking compounding rewards back to the staked balance ensures they can begin earning rewards as well. While some networks or vault products offer automated auto-compounding, Monad keeps this mechanism fully manual. This approach ensures that users maintain full control over when and how their rewards are restaked – an important detail for institutions that require operational oversight, as well as for users who want to optimize for gas costs or timing.
Another thing to note, as investors won’t be able to stake at launch, early staking access will be facilitated through partner integrations, ensuring secure and compliant participation in Monad’s initial staking phase.
To accelerate the Monad ecosystem from the earliest stages, Chorus One has already launched two core products on the Monad testnet, our SDK and staking dApp, both designed to make participation simple, transparent, and secure.
Our staking dApp is now live on the Monad testnet, allowing users to delegate MON, monitor validator performance, and track rewards in one intuitive interface.
Once Monad mainnet launches, users will be able to:
This dApp demonstrates Chorus One’s commitment to accessibility and transparency, providing a frictionless staking experience for both institutions and individual participants.
As one of the world’s most established staking operators, Chorus One brings a proven record of reliability, security, and institutional trust to the Monad ecosystem.
By staking MON with Chorus One, users not only earn rewards but also contribute to the security and decentralization of the Monad network, helping to build a foundation for scalable, permissionless computation.
Monad is reimagining what’s possible for EVM chains, combining Ethereum-level compatibility with next-generation scalability and performance. Its launch marks an exciting new chapter for builders, investors, and validators seeking high-speed, low-latency blockchain infrastructure.
At Chorus One, we’re committed to ensuring Monad’s success by offering best-in-class validator performance, research-backed insights, and easy-to-integrate staking infrastructure for partners and developers.
Whether you’re building a DeFi application, running a custodian service, or simply exploring Monad’s potential, Chorus One provides the tools and expertise to help you participate securely and effectively from day one.
Chorus One is proud to announce a new partnership with Copper, a leader in digital asset custody, prime services and collateral management, to bring enterprise-ready staking to global clients, beginning with The Open Network (TON). This collaboration combines Copper’s award-winning custody platform with Chorus One’s deep expertise in staking infrastructure, creating a seamless, secure, and scalable solution for institutions.
Both Chorus One and Copper share a commitment to making digital asset participation safe, efficient, and institution-ready. Chorus One brings staking infrastructure and operational excellence, having secured billions of dollars across multiple proof-of-stake networks, and through the partnership Copper will provide robust MPC-based custody and prime services.
Together, this partnership represents a long-term vision to expand institutional access to staking across ecosystems. TON has emerged as a dynamic blockchain ecosystem, with strong momentum in adoption and developer activity. Institutions seeking to participate in TON can now do so with confidence through:
By anchoring the partnership with TON, Chorus One and Copper provide institutions with immediate access to a fast-growing network while laying the foundation for future staking integrations.
This roadmap reflects the partnership’s core mission: to make staking as seamless and trusted for institutions as any other financial service.
With Copper’s secure custody infrastructure and Chorus One’s staking expertise, institutions can gain access to staking solutions that combine operational ease and technical excellence.
At Chorus One, our mission has always been to empower investors and institutions to securely and efficiently participate in decentralized finance. Today, we’re excited to share a major step forward in that journey — our collaboration with Morpho and Steakhouse Financial to deliver Chorus One Earn, a forthcoming stablecoin yield product that combines transparency, risk management, and competitive returns for USDC holders.
This collaboration brings together three leaders in the DeFi ecosystem with complementary expertise:
Together, we’re creating a simple, non-custodial way for users to earn yield on idle stablecoins, without compromising on control or oversight.
Stablecoins have become the backbone of onchain finance, yet most treasury and fund managers face the same challenge: how to earn predictable yield on stable assets while managing counterparty and liquidity risk.
With Chorus One Earn, we’re addressing that challenge head-on. The product provides access to curated stablecoin vaults powered by Morpho’s lending network and guided by Steakhouse’s risk-management expertise.
Through the Chorus One platform, users will soon be able to:
Our goal is to make the stablecoin yield experience as frictionless and transparent as possible – whether you’re a DAO, an institutional investor, or a DeFi protocol managing treasury assets.
Chorus One Earn will debut with two curated USDC vaults, both powered by Morpho. Each vault is designed to cater to a different investor profile, offering a choice between stability and higher yield potential. They differ in the range of risk that the curator onboards to each vault to create the target levels of liquidity and borrower interest.
A conservative strategy focused on predictable returns and capital preservation. This vault prioritizes exposure to blue-chip collateral and includes longer governance timelocks to ensure oversight and predictability. It’s an ideal fit for institutions prioritizing stability, liquidity, and transparent governance.
A dynamic, higher-risk strategy designed for investors seeking stronger yield potential. The High Yield vault allocates into emerging collateral categories, such as tokenized private credit and structured products, and features shorter timelocks for quicker adaptation to market opportunities.
Both vaults are bookended by the same infrastructure: robust risk-management frameworks and collateral underwriting and real-time monitoring and 24/7 reallocations.
Every aspect of Chorus One Earn is designed with control and clarity in mind. Depositors retain full custody of their assets and can monitor vault activity in real time. Yield generation is powered by transparent, auditable smart contracts – not opaque off-chain processes.
By integrating Morpho’s lending optimization and Steakhouse’s asset management expertise into our infrastructure, we’re setting a new benchmark for how stablecoin yields can be earned safely and efficiently onchain.
Today’s announcement marks the beginning of this collaboration – the full product launch is coming soon. When it goes live, Chorus One Earn will be available directly through our Widget, dApp, and SDK, giving users multiple ways to integrate stablecoin yield into their treasury operations or DeFi platforms.
We’ll share more details, including performance data and onboarding timelines, in the official launch announcement.
To be the first to access Chorus One Earn when it launches, sign up for updates at chorus.one or follow us on X and LinkedIn.
As institutional capital enters crypto, SOC 2 has become the baseline language of trust—proving that operational controls are documented, tested, and auditable. But while it validates process integrity, it wasn’t built for blockchain-specific risks like validator uptime, key management, or on-chain resilience. The next evolution pairs SOC 2 with ISO 27001 for continuous risk governance and DORA for regulatory resilience, creating a layered assurance model fit for digital assets. Looking ahead, a “SOC 3.0” paradigm will merge continuous monitoring, cryptographic proofs, and real-time transparency—turning trust from a static audit into a living, verifiable standard for institutional crypto infrastructure.
For digital-asset infrastructure, trust isn’t built on slogans, it’s built on standards. Among those, SOC 2 has become the universal language of operational credibility between crypto-native firms and institutional finance. Originally developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls) reports evaluate how well a company protects data across five “Trust Services Criteria”: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy.
For traditional finance, SOC 2 has long been the standard for assessing whether vendors operate with robust security and governance. In the digital-asset economy, it now plays a similar role: bridging Web2 assurance frameworks and Web3 infrastructure. When an institutional investor, custodian, or exchange asks whether a staking provider or node operator is SOC 2-certified, they aren’t just checking the boxes, they want to understand reliability, transparency, and the ability to prove control in an environment where capital never sleeps.
The reason this conversation matters now is that the assurance landscape for crypto infrastructure is changing fast. In Europe, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) will begin enforcement in 2025, requiring continuous monitoring, incident classification, and third-party risk management for all critical ICT providers. At the same time, staking and custody firms across the U.S. and Asia are pursuing SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications to meet procurement standards set by institutional allocators and banks. Together, these shifts are raising the bar: compliance is the price of admission to serve institutional capital.
But realistically, SOC 2 alone can’t capture every crypto-specific risk; key management, validator uptime, or smart-contract exposure all remain. But SOC 2 establishes a shared vocabulary of trust that both TradFi and DeFi understand. The challenge ahead, and the opportunity, is to extend that framework into the unique realities of blockchain infrastructure, to make assurance as continuous, transparent, and composable as the systems it governs.
SOC 2 is often described as the “gold standard” for operational assurance, and in many ways, it is. The framework, governed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), focuses on how an organization designs and operates its internal controls across five Trust Services Criteria:
These pillars reflect the essentials of trust in modern infrastructure, whether in a data center, a SaaS platform, or a staking service. For crypto and digital asset operators, SOC 2 shows that the organization has implemented, documented, and maintained security and operational processes with the same rigor expected in traditional financial institutions.
There are two key forms of SOC 2 reports:
For institutional partners, the distinction matters. A Type II audit provides evidence not just of policy, but of consistent execution, something risk teams view as critical for ongoing relationships.
However, SOC 2 has a well-defined boundary: it tests control integrity, not resilience or industry-specific adequacy. Organizations define their own controls, and auditors assess whether those controls exist and function as described, not whether they meet a universal security baseline. For example:
This is why SOC 2 is best understood as an attestation of operational maturity, not a certification of invulnerability. It provides essential assurance that controls are in place and working, the minimum entry requirement for institutional trust, but it stops short of enforcing resilience, continuity, or sector-specific standards.
For that reason, leading firms layer SOC 2 alongside frameworks such as ISO 27001, which prescribes a full Information Security Management System (ISMS), and DORA, the EU’s new Digital Operational Resilience Act, which mandates continuous incident reporting, stress testing, and third-party risk oversight for financial entities. Together, these frameworks cover what SOC 2 starts: SOC 2 establishes trust in process, ISO 27001 embeds continuous improvement, and DORA enforces regulatory resilience.
In short:
SOC 2 is the starting line for institutional trust. To turn attestation into resilience, firms pair SOC 2 with ISO 27001 and, in the EU, DORA
In traditional finance, governance frameworks tend to overlap, one defines how you manage risk, another defines what you must protect, and another defines how resilient you must be. In crypto infrastructure, that overlap is starting to take the same form. SOC 2, ISO 27001, and the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) each play distinct but complementary roles in building institutional-grade security and assurance.
SOC 2 is fundamentally about trust through documentation and execution. It validates that an organization’s internal controls exist, are logically designed, and operate effectively over time. This is why it’s often the first certification sought by digital-asset custodians, staking operators, and exchange infrastructure providers entering institutional partnerships. SOC 2 is non-prescriptive, it doesn’t tell firms which encryption method to use or how to design access control, but it ensures that whatever control framework the company adopts is consistently applied and auditable.
Where SOC 2 stops at control attestation, ISO 27001 begins with systemic governance. Developed by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO 27001 defines a comprehensive Information Security Management System (ISMS), a living framework for assessing, mitigating, and improving security risks across people, processes, and technology. Unlike SOC 2’s periodic audits, ISO 27001 requires ongoing risk assessments, internal audits, and management reviews, embedding security into continuous operations. For institutions, this makes it the global benchmark for “security maturity.”
For crypto firms, particularly those offering infrastructure to regulated banks or funds, ISO 27001 complements SOC 2 by providing:
In practice, many institutions view SOC 2 + ISO 27001 as the combined standard for enterprise-grade crypto infrastructure: SOC 2 gives assurance to auditors and clients; ISO 27001 satisfies risk and compliance teams.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which will take effect across the EU in January 2025, represents the regulatory evolution of these voluntary frameworks. DORA explicitly targets financial entities and their critical ICT providers, imposing mandatory standards for:
Unlike SOC 2 or ISO 27001, DORA is law, not guidance, and its scope extends to critical service providers to regulated institutions. This means staking infrastructure companies, custodians, or blockchain node operators that serve EU-regulated banks may be classified as “critical ICT third parties,” bringing them under direct oversight by the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs).
In other words:
SOC 2 earns trust.
ISO 27001 builds resilience.
DORA enforces both — under regulatory supervision.
For infrastructure providers like Chorus One, these frameworks work as a progression: SOC 2 establishes procedural trust, ISO 27001 embeds operational discipline, and DORA ensures resilience meets regulatory thresholds. Together, they create a compliance and assurance fabric that speaks both institutional and decentralized languages; aligning crypto infrastructure with the governance rigor expected in modern finance.
SOC 2 has become the passport for trust in digital-asset infrastructure, but it’s only the first chapter in what assurance must become for a 24/7, on-chain economy. The next phase will demand something closer to a “SOC 3.0” standard: one that integrates continuous monitoring, cryptographic verification, and regulatory transparency in real time.
Traditional SOC 2 audits are retrospective snapshots: a look back over six or twelve months to confirm that controls operated as designed. But blockchain infrastructure operates in real time, where validator uptime, MEV execution, or slashing incidents can occur in seconds.
Future assurance models will need to move from static attestations to continuous validation, using telemetry feeds, automated incident reporting, and live dashboards that update an organization’s control status dynamically. This shift mirrors the evolution of DORA’s continuous-resilience mandate and will ultimately bridge compliance with operational reality.
The next generation of assurance will combine conventional audits with on-chain verifiability. Concepts such as Proof-of-Control audits, cryptographic demonstrations that an entity controls validator keys or custody wallets without exposing them, and real-time attestations of uptime, governance participation, and key-management events could make trust both provable and programmable. In this “SOC 3.0” paradigm, auditors can verify it on-chain, linking SOC-style attestations to blockchain-based proofs that anyone can independently confirm.
For regulated institutions, this convergence will make frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and DORA interoperable.
For staking providers and validators, the benefits go beyond compliance. Real-time proof of validator performance, custody control, and incident transparency can enhance reputation, attract institutional delegations, and even feed into insurance underwriting and risk-weighted capital models.
That’s the future of assurance for crypto infrastructure: a living standard that blends the rigor of traditional compliance with the verifiability of blockchain itself. The path from SOC 2 to some new SOC 3.0 will be about designing trust that updates in real time.
