What is Fortkey?
Fortkey is an omni-chain institutional self-custody platform with millisecond signing speeds, designed for secure on-chain trading. It replaces custom hot or cold wallet setups with state-of-the-art enclave security, access and trading policies, and fast support for new chains.
Fortkey offers:
- Secure self-custody: secure new assets with hardware-isolated, enclave-based key management running in your own infrastructure.
- On-chain trading: sign transactions in milliseconds for any DeFi protocol across supported chains.
- Operational overview: import linked custodian wallets read-only alongside your Fortkey trading wallets.
Main concepts
Wallet
A wallet is where private keys live. Fortkey wallets are generated inside secure enclaves in your perimeter; keys never exist in plaintext outside the enclave. Wallets can also be linked from third-party custodians for a single operational view.
Admin
An admin manages and oversees the organization's Fortkey operations: setting up wallets, users and groups, viewing balances, configuring access and trading policies, and managing custodian connections.
Trader
A trader executes trading strategies on supported venues. There are two types:
- Human traders use FortkeyLink, a desktop application that connects to browser extensions like a hardware wallet, so traders keep their usual tools while every order is policy-checked.
- Bot traders connect directly to the Fortkey signing API (or SDK) for automated, low-latency trading.
Policy
Policies define wallet-specific rules the platform enforces:
- Access policies grant or revoke user and group access to wallets.
- Trading policies set limits and controls evaluated against the decoded transaction before any signature is created.
Role
A role defines a user's permissions on the platform itself (RBAC): what actions they can perform, for example ensuring traders can trade but cannot create wallets or change policies.
dApp
A decentralized application endpoint on a chain: DEXs, lending protocols, derivative platforms, and so on. Fortkey signs for any of them, subject to your policies.
Where Fortkey sits
Fortkey is not a custody replacement. Desks keep long-term holdings with their custodian and run trading on Fortkey wallets: keys generated fresh inside your own enclaves, funded with the trading float, signing microseconds from venues. Linked custodian wallets can be imported read-only for a single operational view.