CoinRabbit × NOWCustody: Zero Security Incidents in 7 Years
For a crypto lending product, the choice of custodian determines the stability of the entire credit model. CoinRabbit made that choice in 2019, and it held as the product scaled to institutional volumes.
Why custody was the first hard call
CoinRabbit launched in 2020. Its team combined risk management and cybersecurity experience with blockchain development, and the custody partner was the call it had to get right before anything else. The mechanics explain why: a user posts assets as collateral, and while the loan is active, those assets stay with the custodian. A breach or weak protection there reaches past any single transaction to client funds and the product's reputation.
In 2019–2020, timing worked against a slow build. Mature, usable solutions barely existed, most projects were still in development, and the launch window was closing, so any delay meant ceding share to whoever shipped first. Reliable custody was a precondition for launching at all.
A long build cycle and a custody stack built from scratch were both ruled out, with no time for either. The custodian's stack had to be mature and ready to integrate without heavy rework. On protecting user funds, though, CoinRabbit would not compromise. Expertise was also scarce: in a young market, the company had to define its own standards and architecture, so it needed a partner that could share that expertise and take on non-standard requests.
The task: security the user never notices
CoinRabbit needed infrastructure that would take on the heavy custody mechanics while keeping the user's path short and predictable. Two conditions were non-negotiable: the partner gets no access to sensitive client data and cannot act on user wallets on its own.
One number couldn't move: loan turnaround. The ten-minute average was part of the product's value, since users come to CoinRabbit for fast liquidity. Anything that lengthened the wait for the sake of security did not count as success.
The solution: NOWCustody as the custody layer
That layer was handled by NOWCustody, ChangeNOW's custody product. Wallet operations, access, deposits, and collateral ran on the provider's infrastructure, along the rights split CoinRabbit had set as a requirement.
Rollout: from fast launch to institutional standards
Integration started with a short onboarding. A first call scoped the request, then came account registration and KYB, which took a couple of days; once custody was live, the team stayed reachable for documentation and follow-up questions.
The second stage played out as continuous adaptation. The client base and asset volumes kept growing, the requirements around accountability and protection rose with them, and the integration was tuned to each new need. CoinRabbit brought the NOWCustody team requests to align the setup with institutional standards, and the team responded proactively, adding new safeguards and technologies without slowing transactions down. Over time the integration stack took on more layers of protection and finer-grained access controls, evolving alongside the product.
