Every fintech that adds digital assets has to decide who holds the keys. The options are often framed as "custodial" versus "non-custodial", but the useful questions are more specific.
Running it yourself
Building your own wallet stack means generating and protecting keys, running nodes for every network, watching chains for deposits, handling reorganizations, managing nonces and fees, sweeping funds, and building approval flows. Done well, it gives you complete control. It also makes your team responsible for key ceremonies, hardware security, incident response, and keeping all of it running around the clock.
Using custodial infrastructure
A provider such as Valtu holds keys on your behalf and gives you an API and dashboard on top. Your team decides who gets wallets, what can be paid out, and who must approve it. The provider runs the key storage, the chain integrations and the operations.
The questions that matter more than the label
- Who can move funds? With Valtu, your workspace's policies decide what is signed, and Valtu doesn't approve or co-sign your transfers. With team signing, approvals are checked inside the enclave itself, not just by the server.
- Where do the keys live? Valtu generates and uses keys only inside hardware enclaves, one set per workspace.
- Can you check any of this yourself? The enclave image is built reproducibly and its measurement is published. Anyone can ask the running service for a hardware-signed attestation and compare it. See verify the code that holds your keys.
- What isn't done yet? Ask every provider for its audit status. Ours is on the security page: an internal review is complete, and the external audit is not done yet.
If keys and chains aren't your product, custodial infrastructure lets your team focus on the part that is. If they are, building in-house can make sense. Either way, ask for evidence, not adjectives.