Institutions have moved past the question of whether they should engage with digital assets. The new question is how to engage while controlling risk in a way that satisfies regulators, boards, and risk committees.
The momentum behind this shift is undeniable. Tokenized United States Treasuries have reached more than 5.7 billion dollars in issuance on public blockchains in 2025, supported by organizations such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and Apollo. The broader market for tokenized real-world assets has expanded to more than 23 billion dollars, representing nearly twenty times growth compared to the previous year. Stablecoin settlement volume continues to exceed traditional remittance networks, highlighting a preference for programmable and instantaneous settlement mechanisms.
Institutional adoption is further reinforced by regulatory clarity. In the United States, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued interpretive letters confirming that banks can provide custody and settlement services for crypto assets if they maintain robust risk controls. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation removed prior approval requirements for crypto activities, so long as institutions demonstrate effective management of associated risks. Similar regulatory frameworks are being advanced in Europe and Asia, creating a harmonized expectation that financial institutions can participate in tokenization and custody activities under defined supervisory conditions.
What remains unresolved is the question of how risk and compliance organizations should evaluate blockchain-based infrastructure. Procurement and onboarding cycles for financial institutions often take nine to eighteen months because there is no common framework for comparing DeFi protocols or blockchain providers to traditional vendors. Without a standard approach, promising engagements stall or collapse under the weight of uncertainty.
This is why Web3SOC was created.
From Exploration to Structured Confidence
Yesterday, we highlighted the strategic path for Web3SOC in 2026, detailing the industry-wide collaboration that has defined this standard. [[Link to Announcement]]
Developed in collaboration with leaders across DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, security, and institutional finance including Uniswap Labs, Coinbase, Morpho, Maple Finance, Kiln, Steakhouse Financial, L1D, Secureum, Ethena, Euler and Lido, Web3SOC establishes a shared framework for assessing organizational maturity and long-term institutional readiness in decentralized finance.
Web3SOC is the first security and operational maturity scoring framework designed to align DeFi infrastructure with institutional requirements. It translates technical complexity into structured evaluations that procurement officers, CISOs, compliance leads, and risk managers can use to make informed decisions.
The Web3SOC Breakdown
Web3SOC is the institutional maturity framework designed to evaluate DeFi organizations across four core domains. It provides a common language for institutions and organizations to assess readiness without abstracting away the realities of decentralized systems.
Key Evaluation Areas
Web3SOC evaluates organizations across four fundamental maturity domains:
- Operational: Governance structures, organizational design, decision-making processes, change management, and key custody practices that underpin day-to-day stability.
- Financial: Economic design, capital resilience, treasury management, and exposure to counterparty and systemic risk.
- Security: Protocol security, infrastructure resilience, incident response capability, and security history beyond point-in-time audits.
- Regulatory: Compliance posture, disclosures, and jurisdictional considerations relevant to institutional participation.
How the Assessment is Represented
Web3SOC produces a detailed scorecard and maturity classification designed for decision-making and benchmarking, not just marketing.
- Private Reports: Detailed scoring is shared privately with the assessed organization and can be shared with institutional stakeholders (such as bank procurement teams) as part of diligence workflows.
- Public Certification: Publicly, Web3SOC is represented through clear certification statuses to keep the market signal simple while ensuring the underlying work remains evidence-driven.
Certification Statuses
Organizations can publicly share one of the following statuses:
- Web3SOC Certification In Progress
- Web3SOC Certified
These badges allow organizations to signal participation and completion on websites and investor materials, while the detailed scorecard supports the deep-dive diligence required by risk committees.
Why Traditional Security Audits Alone Do Not Satisfy
Security audits are essential, but they address only a portion of the criteria required by institutional risk committees. A protocol or infrastructure provider may present a clean smart contract audit of its codebase, but that leaves unanswered questions about governance processes, financial resilience, incident response readiness, or regulatory alignment.
Institutional risk managers need a holistic view that spans all domains of operational and financial integrity. Web3SOC provides this view in a structured format.
For Banks: Accelerating Risk Audits and Procurement
Banks operate under the most demanding procurement regimes of any industry. Vendor onboarding often begins with hundreds of due diligence questions and multi-stage audits. This process can last months, and most blockchain-native organizations are not equipped to respond in ways that align with traditional frameworks.
Web3SOC accelerates this process by providing pre-scored assessments that map directly into bank procurement requirements. If a custody provider or tokenization platform is Web3SOC Certified, procurement officers can request the private detailed scorecard to establish a verified baseline immediately.
Consider a global bank preparing to launch a tokenized deposits initiative. By selecting a Web3SOC Certified counterparty, the bank’s procurement process can move from exploratory discussions to an executable pilot within a single quarter. The key is that Web3SOC provides risk managers with a structure they recognize and can trust. This reduces internal friction and accelerates decision-making.
For Asset Managers: Vetting Tokenized Infrastructure
Asset managers are deploying tokenized funds and exploring onchain distribution as a way to expand their investor base. Yet every new infrastructure partner must pass compliance scrutiny.
Web3SOC offers a framework that allows asset managers to pre-vet custodians, transfer agents, and onchain distribution providers. Rather than initiating fragmented assessments for each counterparty, managers can rely on the standardized Web3SOC framework to highlight both strengths and control gaps.
For example, an asset manager preparing to distribute a tokenized money market fund must consider the custody, compliance, and operational resilience of infrastructure providers. With Web3SOC, the manager receives a consistent scoring profile across all providers, enabling faster product launch without compromising governance obligations.
Common gaps revealed by Web3SOC include lack of independent proof-of-reserves audits, insufficient jurisdictional AML controls, or inadequate transparency around smart contract upgrade processes. By surfacing these issues early, asset managers can focus on remediation or select more resilient partners.
For Fintechs: Integrating Infrastructure with Assurance
Fintechs compete on speed to market, but credibility with regulators and banking partners depends on trust. Every new feature, whether a stablecoin-based remittance channel or crypto custody integration, relies on third-party infrastructure.
Web3SOC functions as a ready-made diligence pack. Fintech organizations can integrate Web3SOC assessments into their vendor selection process, allowing them to move quickly while maintaining credibility with banking partners.
Imagine a remittance fintech planning to launch global settlement using stablecoins. Instead of relying on vendor marketing materials, the fintech can reference a Web3SOC assessment that verifies the issuer’s operational, financial, and regulatory maturity. This approach reduces risk and accelerates deployment without compromising regulatory trust.
Why Institutions Trust Web3SOC
Institutions trust Web3SOC because it aligns with the frameworks they already use. Scores map directly to NIST CSF, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and relevant digital asset supervisory guidance. Ratings are based on independently verified evidence rather than self-reported claims.
For banks, this means procurement cycles measured in weeks rather than years. For asset managers, it means consistent and comparable evaluations across multi-chain deployments. For fintechs, it means accelerated integration without sacrificing compliance confidence.
Appendix A: Bank Deep Dive
- Strategic pressures: Banks face pressure to modernize settlement and custody infrastructure while maintaining regulatory alignment.
- Common blockers: Security audits limited to codebases, absence of financial stress tests, lack of governance documentation, or unclear upgrade controls.
- Web3SOC resolution: Delivers mapped evidence packages in familiar procurement formats, integrates stress testing into financial assessments, and documents governance and operational maturity.
Appendix B: Asset Manager Deep Dive
- Strategic pressures: Competition in tokenized money market funds, demand for fractional ownership, and investor preference for 24/7 liquidity access.
- Common blockers: Custodians without proof-of-reserves audits, AML controls failing across jurisdictions, and opaque smart contract governance.
- Web3SOC resolution: Provides comparative scoring across multiple providers, highlights jurisdictional compliance gaps, and documents upgrade governance.
Appendix C: Fintech Deep Dive
- Strategic pressures: Need to differentiate quickly while satisfying banking partners and regulators.
- Common blockers: Vendor diligence packs that fail institutional standards, unclear operational resilience, and lack of financial transparency.
- Web3SOC resolution: Delivers structured diligence evidence that fintechs can embed directly into their vendor management process.
Conclusion
Financial institutions are no longer questioning whether digital assets will matter. They are now focusing on how to integrate them without compromising trust.
Web3SOC provides the structure required to bridge that gap. It transforms blockchain-native infrastructure into institutionally legible scores across operational, financial, regulatory, and security domains.
For banks, Web3SOC accelerates procurement. For asset managers, it enables consistent evaluation of tokenized infrastructure. For fintechs, it supports fast feature launches without compromising credibility.
The adoption of digital asset infrastructure is inevitable. Web3SOC ensures that adoption is controlled, transparent, and trusted.
Get in touch with Cantina to see how Web3SOC can accelerate procurement, reduce compliance friction, and provide the structured assurance institutions require to safely integrate digital assets.