New partnership enables keyless algo-trading on crypto-exchanges

Cryptohopper team up with Tide Foundation to enable unprecedented advanced cryptocurrency trading capabilities without compromising security.

View Interactive explainer on how it works >

AMSTERDAM / SYDNEY Dec 19, 2019 - Established automated crypto trading platform Cryptohopper and Tide Foundation, an open source privacy technology venture have announced a partnership to pilot a new standard of advanced keyless trading.

“Not your keys, not your crypto” is a mantra for how crypto holders’ should govern the handling of their crypto-assets. Unfortunately, the current reality often necessitates compromises to that philosophy for crypto traders.

Today’s announcement ushers in a new era in cryptocurrency trading, which will enable advanced trading strategies to be automated on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), without the need to store the cryptographic private keys.

Today’s environment

"Key management challenges, coupled with the need for 24/7 availability and perfect timing to execute crypto trading strategies, has seen traders turn to centralized exchanges"

Ruud Feltkamp CEO & Co-Founder Cryptohopper

On centralized exchanges, traders’ funds are effectively deposited with the exchanges to ensure their availability. This creates a significant security risk and a loss of asset sovereignty for the traders. Additionally a risk borne by the exchanges themselves who carry the liability of holding and protecting these assets. With the scale of a theft averaging $90m and an estimated $1bn worth of crypto stolen from exchanges, that liability is significant.

Trading on decentralized exchanges allows peer to peer trading via smart contracts, offering better transparency leading to greater security and asset sovereignty. But the need to sign every trade severely limits the practicality of unattended trading strategies.

"The collaboration combines Cryptohopper’s next generation automated trading platform, with Tide’s Decentralized Automated Trustee key management technology, to execute trades with real-time data, without the need for traders to rely on a third-party custodian of their keys or assets."

Issac Elnekave, Co-founder Tide Foundation

How is this achieved?

As part of a suite of privacy protection infrastructure, Tide has developed a Decentralized Automated Trustee (DAT), a distributed network of unaffiliated operators that acts as a trustless custodian and power of attorney for a cryptocurrency account. No single node (or subgroup) in the network has any access or knowledge of the entire account’s key, or the authority to act on its own, rendering malicious access to the key virtually impossible. Using secure multi-party computation, these nodes act as a swarm to perform functions with the authority of the key on the account’s behalf, based only on predefined parameters on the blockchain.

"Tide’s technology removes the UX barriers of today’s solutions without compromising on the security and principles of decentralization. It provides our platform the availability we need, without the unnecessary risk of holding customer’s keys or funds."

Said Feltkamp

Cryptohopper’s automated trading platform used by over 165,000 traders offers the most comprehensive suite of trading tools on the market, with advanced capabilities like copy trading, social trading and mirror trading.

Their trading platform will be extended to recommend trades that match a trader’s strategy to their DAT, who will sign those trades on behalf of the trader as long as it complies within the approved parameters.

"Cryptohopper’s commitment to the privacy and security of their strong community, along with their superb growth, provide a brilliant platform to share our technology."

Said Elnekave