Upshift x Kraken on Insto Vaults, DeFi Yield, and Institutional Crypto

Yield from custody

Kraken Institutional launched Insto Vaults with Upshift so that institutions can deploy idle treasury into permissioned DeFi vaults directly from Kraken qualified custody, with no new counterparty relationship and no self-custody infrastructure required. Kraken launched its first bespoke managed-yield solution in February 2026 with Bitwise, and Upshift is the next manager on that framework.

Lincoln Bartlett, head of OTC sales at Kraken, points to the firm's record: he says it has been trusted for fifteen years in crypto, has 15,000,000 clients and has offered qualified custody for three years.

Lessons from 2022

Bartlett says institutions were scarred by the 2022 failures of firms where there was no transparency. With vaults and curators, he says, transparency and controls are front and center and the products are customizable. Aya Kantorovich says each vault is purpose-built per client strategy and permissioned, with no commingling.

Every deal is custom

Aya Kantorovich says every deal Upshift & August has looked at has been custom, because each client serves a different geography, user and asset type and reports to a different regulator. She adds that getting institutions comfortable with smart contract risk and new workflows takes months, sometimes years.

Scale and the bet on vaults

August Digital reports roughly $7 billion in monthly volume across 13-plus chains, 250-plus tokens and 70-plus protocols. Aya Kantorovich co-founded the company in 2023 with the thesis of moving the strategies of top asset managers into non-custodial vaults anyone can access, and she describes vaults as a back end and middle office for all yield, on chain or off chain, across equities and indexes.