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Client Focus publishes analysis for the teams responsible for digital asset services: how operations are staffed, what supervisors ask for, and what accountable response looks like in practice.
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Assurance is not an audit: what an automated smart contract verdict can and cannot claim
Automated analysis and manual audit answer different questions. Treating one as the other is how a passing result becomes a false sense of safety.
Read the perspectiveReproducible verdicts: why determinism matters for on-chain assurance
An assurance result a client cannot independently reproduce is an opinion. Determinism turns it into evidence.
Read the perspectiveWhat to ask an on-chain assurance vendor
Third-party risk review decides whether an assurance result can be relied on. The questions matter more than the marketing.
Read the perspectiveDefending against oracle and economic manipulation
The exploits that drain the most value are economic, not syntactic. Defending against them takes more than a scanner.
Read the perspectiveThe operations case for continuous contract assurance
A contract audited once is a contract assured at one moment. Systems that change need assurance that continues.
Read the perspectiveMarket structure legislation: what digital asset operators should watch in the CLARITY Act
The House passed the CLARITY Act in July 2025; Senate consideration continued through 2026.
Read the briefingAlerts are not controls
Detection is necessary. Accountable response is what protects an asset.
Read the perspectiveOperational evidence under DORA and MiCA
What European supervisors expect a digital asset operation to produce on request.
Read the briefingBank-led on-chain money and the operator question
In June 2026 a consortium of major banks announced a bank-led initiative for tokenized deposits operated by a clearing house, a signal that institutions prefer operator-run infrastructure.
Read the perspectiveWhy shifts overlap
Handover is where continuous operations fail. Client Focus designs it out.
Read the noteThe GENIUS Act implementing rules: the control framework supervisors will examine
The OCC proposed rules in February 2026 and the FDIC in April 2026 setting capital, liquidity, reserve and risk-management requirements for permitted issuers.
Read the briefing2025 digital asset losses: what the numbers say about operations
Approximately 3.4 billion dollars was stolen in 2025, concentrated in a small number of large incidents, with DPRK-linked actors responsible for a record share.
Read the note2025 in review: the year digital assets became an operations problem
Regulation arrived, losses concentrated, and banks moved to public networks. The common thread was accountability for operations.
Read the perspectiveTokenized deposits move to public networks: what changes for bank operations
In November 2025 a major US bank began settling a deposit token on a public Layer 2 network, signaling that public blockchains are now part of bank infrastructure.
Read the perspectiveNode and RPC health as a security signal
Infrastructure degradation is often the first visible symptom of an attack or a failed change; the network operations center and the security operations center must share telemetry.
Read the notePrivileged actions on-chain: the events a security operations center must treat as critical
Role grants, configuration-flag changes, proxy upgrades and pause-state changes are the highest-signal events in a contract's life.
Read the noteThe GENIUS Act is law: what permitted stablecoin issuers should prepare for
Federal stablecoin legislation created a licensing regime for payment stablecoin issuers and set the stage for implementing rules on reserves, redemption, controls and third-party oversight.
Read the briefingMiCA authorization for crypto-asset service providers: the operating obligations behind the license
As national transition periods under MiCA ran through 2025, firms discovered that authorization is an operating commitment, not a one-time filing.
Read the briefingOCC Interpretive Letter 1183: banks may act as nodes on distributed ledgers, with supervisory expectations attached
The OCC reaffirmed that national banks may engage in crypto-asset custody, certain stablecoin activities and node operation without prior supervisory non-objection, provided the activity is conducted in a safe and sound manner.
Read the briefingThe February 2025 exchange breach: lessons for signing operations
The largest theft in the industry's history to date, approximately 1.5 billion dollars from a single exchange, was executed through the signing workflow, not a smart contract bug.
Read the noteDORA is in force: what crypto-asset service providers must now evidence
From January 17, 2025 the Digital Operational Resilience Act applies to crypto-asset service providers as financial entities.
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