Anchorage Digital has expanded its support for the Hyperliquid ecosystem by adding HYPE staking on HyperCORE, complementing its existing HYPE custody services on HyperEVM. 

Staking, the process of locking crypto to secure a blockchain network in exchange for earning rewards, is being offered through Anchorage Digital Bank and through Anchorage Digital Singapore, which holds a Major Payment Institution license. The company said staking will also be available through Porto, its self-custody wallet.

The bank is partnering with staking infrastructure provider Figment to run the underlying validator infrastructure, it said in a Friday announcement.  

With custody and staking now live across HyperEVM and HyperCORE, the company said it can support a wider range of Hyperliquid activity, including access to its decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem through Porto and custody for additional HyperEVM tokens, such as Kinetiq.

Hyperliquid, a layer 1 blockchain powering a decentralized exchange, uses its own architecture split between HyperEVM for Ethereum-style smart contracts and HyperCORE for native staking. 

The latest move from Anchorage Digital comes two days after it announced a partnership with Mezo, a DeFi platform for Bitcoin-backed borrowing.

Anchorage Digital Bank, founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco, is the only federally chartered crypto bank in the United States. It operates in conjunction with the broader Anchorage Digital platform.

Related: Anchorage launches Starknet staking for institutions amid crypto yield demand

Institutional DeFi gains momentum

Anchorage Digital’s latest initiative reflects a wider trend of pulling DeFi infrastructure and yield-generating staking into institutional platforms, as more custodians and infrastructure providers begin offering controlled access to staking and other onchain services.

In October, Crypto.com announced that users would be able to lend wrapped cryptocurrency and earn stablecoin yield through Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol. Morpho plans to launch stablecoin markets on the Cronos blockchain, with initial vaults expected to be launched this year.

In September, Coinbase followed suit by adding support for Morpho directly inside the Coinbase app. The integration allows users to lend USDC (USDC) and earn up to 10.8% yield without navigating external DeFi platforms or separate wallets.

In November, crypto infrastructure company Threshold upgraded its tBTC bridge to enable institutions to mint tBTC on supported chains in a single Bitcoin transaction, without requiring extra approvals or gas fees. The company said the changes are meant to make it easier for large Bitcoin (BTC) holders to deploy assets into DeFi protocols rather than keeping them idle.

A report from Binance Research found that DeFi lending protocols have grown more than 72% from January to Sept. 3. The company said the surge is being driven by increased institutional use of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

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