The Kraken exchange will issue a self-sustaining crypto wallet following other CEXs.

Crypto exchange Kraken has released its self-managed wallet for digital assets, following the likes of Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Bitget and Bybit.

“Whether you are a Kraken customer or not, you can use the multi-chain Kraken wallet as a bridge to a decentralized financial system,” the exchange's staff wrote. Currently, Kraken Wallet supports assets on eight blockchains, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Dogecoin (DOGE).

Wallet developers claim that the app “collects the absolute minimum amount of data needed to function as a wallet” and that “internal app performance analytics are not even collected.” The company also said:

“User activity is proxied by Kraken's own infrastructure, protecting your IP address and protecting your identity and location information from outside exposure.”

For security, the wallet features mobile biometrics and user password protection, which is code audited by Bits Trace. The application code is open source and available on GitHub.

Functionality-wise, Kraken Wallet supports decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized applications (dApps) via Wallet Connect and “24/7/365” customer support.

“Kraken Wallet is a way for us to invest in your key, which is essential to the existence of permissionless financial access to your crypto ecosystem,” Kraken Wallet product director Eric Kuhn said in a statement.

Exchanges have turned into a self-sustaining wallet sector amid tighter controls on their activities globally.

On April 11, Kraken announced that it was dropping support for the Monero privacy token for its customers in Ireland and Belgium. Last October, the exchange suspended support for several stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and DAI for its Canadian users.

In many jurisdictions, self-sustaining wallets are not subject to the same rules for money transmitters as exchanges because they do not process fiat currency transactions natively.

On March 19, the European Parliament repealed the €1,000 ($1,080) limit on cryptocurrency payments from self-hosted crypto wallets as part of new anti-money laundering rules.

Similarly, on March 28, U.S. District Judge Catherine Failla ruled that Coinbase Wallet is “not a broker” and, therefore, not subject to brokerage rules set forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Related: US probes Trust Wallet iOS app for vulnerability