Puffer Partners with Anchorage Digital to Bring Institutional Custody and Settlement to Puffer UniFi

Puffer Partners with Anchorage Digital to Bring Institutional Custody and Settlement to Puffer UniFi

Puffer is partnering with Anchorage Digital, home to America’s first federally regulated crypto bank, which will serve as the day-one institutional custodian for Puffer UniFi.

The partnership goes beyond custody. Puffer and Anchorage Digital will work together across stablecoin infrastructure, native settlement, institutional payments, and agentic payments, bringing several critical pieces of institutional infrastructure into the Puffer UniFi stack from launch. 

Puffer UniFi is Puffer’s Ethereum-aligned execution and settlement network, designed to deliver high-performance execution while remaining synchronously composable with Ethereum. By combining that environment with Anchorage Digital’s institutional infrastructure, the partnership creates new rails for institutions, registered merchants, and increasingly automated financial activity to transact and settle on Ethereum.

Here is how the pieces come together.

1. Institutional Custody from Day One

For institutions, onchain participation starts with custody.

Unlike individual users, institutions require secure custody, operational controls, permissions, compliance processes, and infrastructure built around institutional workflows.

Anchorage Digital will serve as Puffer UniFi’s day-one institutional custodian, bringing that access layer to the network from launch.

This gives institutions an established institutional custody provider through which they can securely hold and access assets used across Puffer UniFi applications and settlement flows.

Puffer UniFi provides the execution and settlement environment. Anchorage Digital provides the institutional infrastructure through which assets can be securely held and accessed.

2. Stablecoin Infrastructure and Native Settlement

Puffer and Anchorage Digital will also work together to support stablecoin issuance and native settlement on Puffer UniFi.

Stablecoins are becoming a core settlement asset for onchain finance, but institutional adoption requires more than issuance alone. Institutions also need trusted custody, reliable execution, settlement capacity, and access to liquidity.

The partnership brings those layers together:

• Stablecoins provide the settlement asset
• Anchorage Digital provides institutional custody and related infrastructure
• Puffer UniFi provides the execution and settlement environment

The result is infrastructure designed for institutional stablecoin activity from the outset.

3. High-Throughput, Real-Time Settlement for Payments

Puffer UniFi is designed to combine high-throughput execution and real-time settlement with direct access to Ethereum liquidity.

Through synchronous composability, applications on Puffer UniFi can interact with Ethereum L1 state and liquidity rather than operating inside a fully isolated liquidity environment.

Puffer Preconf adds low-latency execution guarantees, while based sequencing keeps transaction ordering aligned with Ethereum.

Together, these components provide a responsive settlement environment for institutional payment infrastructure while preserving close coordination with Ethereum.

For Anchorage Digital, this creates settlement rails that combine performance with access to Ethereum’s liquidity and security.

4. A Settlement Layer for Agentic Payments

The partnership also extends into agentic payments.

Anchorage Digital has developed infrastructure that enables software agents to initiate payments on behalf of financial institutions and registered merchants. As more financial activity becomes programmable and automated, the underlying settlement infrastructure must be able to operate at similar speed and scale.

Puffer UniFi provides the settlement layer underneath that activity.

Anchorage Digital’s agentic payment infrastructure will leverage Puffer UniFi for high-throughput stablecoin settlement while remaining connected to Ethereum liquidity and security.

This creates a path toward financial infrastructure where software can initiate transactions, move value, and settle onchain within an institutional-grade framework.

Building Institutional Rails for Puffer UniFi

The partnership brings together several complementary layers:

Anchorage Digital provides institutional custody, stablecoin infrastructure, and payment capabilities.

Puffer UniFi provides high-performance execution, native settlement, and direct access to Ethereum liquidity.

Together, these components create infrastructure for:

• Institutional stablecoin issuance
• Real-time payments and settlement
• Agentic payments
• Institutional access to Ethereum liquidity

Agentic payments are one application of this infrastructure, but the broader opportunity is much larger.

As financial activity moves from manually initiated transactions toward increasingly programmable and automated systems, settlement infrastructure will need to evolve with it.

Through Puffer UniFi, that activity can scale while remaining connected to Ethereum rather than moving into a separate financial environment.

The Anchorage Digital partnership brings a critical institutional layer into Puffer UniFi from day one，and lays the foundation for a broader range of stablecoin payments, institutional settlement, agentic commerce, and programmable onchain finance.

About Puffer Finance

​Puffer Finance is an Ethereum infrastructure company building Puffer UniFi, an Ethereum-native settlement network building the next-generation settlement layer for agentic commerce. By combining high-performance execution with real-time settlement and Ethereum security, Puffer UniFi enables AI agents, institutions, and applications to transact seamlessly at scale. Puffer is backed by Ethereum Foundation, Electric Capital, Brevan Howard Digital, Coinbase Ventures, YZi Labs, F-Prime Capital, and Franklin Templeton. Learn more at puffer.fi, unifi.puffer.fi, X, and LinkedIn.

About Anchorage Digital

Anchorage Digital is the proven infrastructure layer for modern financial markets that gives institutions a single platform to participate in digital assets, including prime services, tokenization, stablecoins, and the governance framework for agentic finance. Home to Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., America’s first federally regulated digital asset bank, Anchorage Digital also serves institutions through Anchorage Digital Singapore, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore; Anchorage Digital NY, which holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services; and self-custody wallet Porto by Anchorage Digital. Anchorage Digital Bank also offers fiat custody services through an FDIC-insured, licensed sub-custodian. Anchorage Digital is funded by leading institutions including Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Visa, with a valuation of $4.2 billion. Founded in 2017 in San Francisco, California, Anchorage Digital has offices in New York, New York; Porto, Portugal; Singapore; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Learn more at anchorage.com, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn.