Top 5 Blockchain Infrastructure Companies Powering Institutional Adoption

Financial institutions are increasingly eyeing blockchain technology for its potential to streamline settlement processes, enable real-time transfers, and support the tokenization of real-world assets, including securities, credit, bonds, and even real estate. Blockchain and the asset classes it supports appeal to financial institutions due to its greater efficiency, transparency, and the promise of automated financial transactions.

However, for institutions, adoption isn't as easy as a simple integration via an API. Institutions must overcome a plethora of hurdles, including regulatory and data privacy considerations, a lack of standardization, operational risks surrounding custody and identity, and even legacy system integrations.

As TradFi deepens its interest in tokenized RWAs and decentralized finance, the path to adoption typically requires partnering with third-party blockchain infrastructure companies to bypass blockchain's technical complexities and operational hurdles. Here are five of the leading infrastructure companies fueling institutional adoption by making blockchain TradFi-friendly.

Fireblocks

Fireblocks is one of the world's leading digital asset infrastructure companies, providing a secure, scalable, and comprehensive platform to streamline custody, tokenization, payment, settlement, and trading operations across a diverse range of use cases. At its core is a multi-layer security platform that combines multi-party computation (MPC), hardware isolation, and policy-based governance. Its platform provides institutional-grade security to protect private keys, reduce operational risk, and safeguard against both internal and external threats, enabling asset managers, fintech, or banks to custody, transfer, and issue digital assets securely and compliantly.

Fireblocks also provides an extensive network of automation capabilities to boost operational efficiency and empower institutions to scale their digital assets operations. With over 1,800 liquidity partners and counterparties, as well as APIs and custom workflows, Fireblocks makes it easy for institutions to launch tokenizations, digital payments, and trading services.

Fireblocks is trusted by more than 2,000 organizations, including BNY Mellon, Galaxy, and Revolut, to secure over $10 trillion in digital asset transactions across some 100 blockchains and 300 million wallet users.

Chainlink

Known for its blockchain abstraction layer that enables universal smart contract connectivity via blockchain-agnostic decentralized oracles, Chainlink is also active in driving institutional adoption of blockchain, DeFi, and RWA tokenization. It accomplishes this by addressing issues surrounding data availability, trust-minimized automation, and interoperability. Chainlink's technology enables institutions to develop customized, compliant, and future-proof applications and tokenized assets.

By essentially serving as an intermediary between blockchains and TradFi systems, Chainlink provides institutions with verified pricing, cross-chain interoperability, workflow automation, and real-world integration thanks to partnerships with SWIFT and other banks. This gives institutions the blockchain infrastructure needed to securely experiment before deciding to scale up. With more than $21 trillion in value, Chainlink enables some of the world's most influential institutions to offer blockchain-based solutions and products.

Applied Blockchain

As a veteran in the enterprise blockchain space, Applied Blockchain is a development studio specializing in blockchain and privacy technologies. Applied Blockchain, which is marking a decade of innovating and supporting blockchain developments these days, has been helping organizations across industries—including energy, healthcare, and supply chain—realize the potential privacy-oriented blockchain use cases can offer.

Applied Blockchain helps organizations through an array of services that range from ideation, consultancy, and workshops to more technical aspects that cover architecture, design, development, and support. The company specializes in helping institutions and blockchain infrastructure providers implement privacy features to enable compliant and scalable solutions.

Over the years, Applied Blockchain has collaborated with major financial institutions such as Barclays, Bank of America, Grupo Bancolombia, and Shell—helping the energy giant develop the world's first oil product derivatives trade using blockchain. Applied Blockchain also worked with RiskBlocks to build a blockchain-powered marketplace and workflow system to streamline the full lifecycle of capital risk transfers in a single transparent end-to-end system.

Consensys

Consensys is a leading Ethereum-oriented software company that provides infrastructure, tools, and enterprise-grade services and solutions so institutions can confidently build, deploy, and manage blockchain-based applications. Its flagship products, which include MetaMask Institutional Infura, offer institutions the secure wallet access, scalable infrastructure, and developer toolkits required to interact with Ethereum and other EVM-compatible networks such as Polygon and BNB Smart Chain.

By offering institutions a full stack from custody solutions with granular controls, compliance features, and developer platforms, Consensys removes the challenges of engaging directly with blockchain protocols. The company also provides consulting a white label services to help smaller banks and asset managers design and deploy tokenized assets, stablecoins, and other infrastructure to support digital capital markets. With its strategic support and Ethereum-based software tools, Consensys allows institutions to overcome technical barriers and benefit from blockchain's capabilities within frameworks that meet their specific needs.

Maple Finance

Maple Finance is a blockchain-based capital markets platform allowing institutional lending through tokenized, under-collateralized loans, a model that diverges from the over-collateralization common in DeFi. The platform offers credit professionals a mechanism to originate and manage loan pools on-chain. It accomplishes this through rigid underwriting processes and greater borrower due diligence, which enables institutions to deploy capital with greater transparency, efficiency, and speed in comparison to traditional credit marketplaces.

Maple Finance offers a familiar risk-return structure but with improved data visibility, programmable compliance, and real-time settlement. It uses smart contracts to eliminate intermediaries and automate processes, reducing costs and friction without sacrificing institutional-grade controls. By acting as a bridge between traditional credit allocation and the DeFi ecosystem, Maple Finance opens access for institutions to engage with blockchain-native borrowers.