[Open Grant] Filecoin Institutional Custody Integration Toolkit

# Open Grant Proposal: Filecoin Institutional Custody Integration Toolkit

**Project Name:** Balance Institutional Filecoin Integration

**Proposal Category:** Integrations

**Individual or Entity Name:** Paradiso Ventures Inc. (operating as Balance)

**Proposer:** @CryptoKroeger

**Project Repo(s):**
- A new public repository will be created for all grant-funded deliverables and dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0.
- Existing Balance API documentation: https://balance-1.gitbook.io/balance-custody-api

**Filecoin ecosystem affiliations:** None.

**Technical Sponsor:** None at the time of submission.

**Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this grant under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?:** Yes.

# Project Summary

Institutions that want to hold, transact with, or build products around FIL and Filecoin Virtual Machine assets need infrastructure that fits established custody, compliance, approval, and audit workflows. Today, many teams must assemble chain-specific address handling, transaction construction, gas estimation, signing, monitoring, and operational controls themselves. This creates duplicated engineering work and slows adoption by regulated institutions, asset issuers, funds, fintechs, and enterprise treasury teams.

Balance proposes to build and publish an open-source Filecoin institutional custody integration toolkit. The toolkit will provide reusable TypeScript components, reference API workflows, test fixtures, implementation guidance, and a production-informed reference integration covering FIL and relevant FVM transaction flows. Balance will use the toolkit to add Filecoin support to its institutional platform while ensuring the grant-funded outputs remain usable by other custody providers, wallet developers, fintechs, exchanges, and enterprise teams.

## Impact

Filecoin's 2026 strategy emphasizes paid network usage, onchain services, and infrastructure that helps real customers transact with the network. Institutional custody is an enabling layer for that growth: organizations need secure asset control, auditable approvals, reliable transaction lifecycle monitoring, and documented integration patterns before they can deploy meaningful capital or build customer-facing Filecoin products.

This project reduces integration cost across the ecosystem by publishing reusable components rather than funding only a proprietary Balance feature. Success means that a developer can use the public toolkit to validate Filecoin addresses, construct and test supported transactions, estimate fees, monitor confirmations, and understand institutional custody workflows without reverse-engineering a production integration. It also creates a direct adoption path through Balance's existing institutional relationships across Canada and the United States.

The risks of not addressing this gap are slower institutional adoption, repeated implementation work, inconsistent transaction handling, and limited support for FIL and FVM assets in regulated financial infrastructure.

## Outcomes

The project will deliver:

1. An MIT/Apache-2 dual-licensed TypeScript toolkit for Filecoin institutional integrations.
2. Address validation and normalization utilities for supported Filecoin address formats.
3. Transaction construction, serialization, fee estimation, signing-interface, broadcast, and receipt-monitoring components for supported FIL flows.
4. Reference support and examples for relevant FVM token interactions.
5. Testnet and mainnet configuration, deterministic test fixtures, and automated integration tests.
6. Reference REST/API workflows showing wallet creation, deposit-address assignment, balance queries, withdrawal preparation, approval, broadcast, and status monitoring.
7. An institutional integration guide covering operational controls, approval policies, reconciliation, audit logging, incident handling, and key chain-specific considerations.
8. A public reference implementation and developer quick-start.
9. A production-informed Balance integration using the public toolkit.
10. A final implementation report documenting performance, limitations, adoption results, and recommended follow-on work.

Success metrics:

- Public repository, dual licensing, CI, tagged releases, and complete developer documentation.
- Automated coverage of the supported transaction lifecycle and representative edge cases.
- Successful testnet and mainnet validation.
- At least three design or pilot partners engaged during development.
- At least ten institutional or ecosystem prospects introduced to the integration within six months of launch.
- At least 100 Filecoin wallets and 500 Filecoin-related transactions supported through the resulting integration within twelve months, subject to customer demand and onboarding.

## Data Onboarding

Not applicable. This proposal focuses on custody and transaction infrastructure rather than directly onboarding storage data.

## Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

The primary audience is custody providers, fintechs, exchanges, tokenization platforms, asset issuers, funds, enterprise treasury teams, and developers building institutional Filecoin products. Balance already works with institutions across Canada and the United States and supports more than $2.5 billion in assets under custody, 3 million wallets, and 1 million transactions.

Balance will recruit the first three design partners from existing institutional and ecosystem relationships. Public documentation, code examples, release notes, technical walkthroughs, and direct outreach to Filecoin builders will support broader adoption. We will also invite feedback through the public repository and coordinate with Filecoin developer channels. The first ten users will be targeted through hands-on integration support; broader adoption will be driven through self-serve documentation and reusable API examples.

## Development Roadmap

### Milestone 1 — Architecture, specification, and repository foundation

**Dates:** September 1–30, 2026
**Team:** Two engineers, one product lead, and security/compliance review
**Funding:** $10,000

Deliverables:

- Public repository with MIT and Apache-2.0 licenses.
- Technical architecture and supported-scope specification.
- Filecoin network and address-model analysis.
- Transaction lifecycle, error model, and security-boundary documentation.
- Test strategy, CI configuration, and initial fixtures.
- Public implementation plan incorporating community feedback.

### Milestone 2 — Core toolkit and testnet validation

**Dates:** October 1–31, 2026
**Team:** Two engineers, one product lead, and QA support
**Funding:** $20,000

Deliverables:

- Address validation and normalization package.
- FIL transaction construction and serialization components.
- Fee estimation and configurable signing interfaces.
- Broadcast, confirmation, and receipt-monitoring components.
- Representative FVM interaction examples.
- Automated unit and integration tests.
- Testnet release with tagged package version and developer documentation.

### Milestone 3 — Reference implementation, mainnet validation, and adoption package

**Dates:** November 1–December 15, 2026
**Team:** Two engineers, one product lead, one institutional adoption lead, and security/compliance review
**Funding:** $20,000

Deliverables:

- Reference REST/API workflows and quick-start application.
- Institutional custody operations and controls guide.
- Mainnet validation of supported flows.
- Production-informed integration into Balance using the public toolkit.
- At least three design or pilot partner engagements.
- Public technical walkthrough and final implementation report.
- Documented maintenance backlog and ecosystem handoff.

## Total Budget Requested

| Milestone # | Description | Deliverables | Completion Date | Funding |
|---|---|---|---|---:|
| 1 | Architecture and open-source foundation | Specification, repository, licenses, security model, tests and implementation plan | September 30, 2026 | $10,000 |
| 2 | Core toolkit and testnet validation | Transaction components, FVM examples, automated tests and testnet release | October 31, 2026 | $20,000 |
| 3 | Reference implementation and adoption | API examples, institutional guide, mainnet validation, pilots and final report | December 15, 2026 | $20,000 |
| **Total** | | | | **$50,000** |

## Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

Balance will maintain the public toolkit for at least 24 months after grant completion as part of its supported-network infrastructure. Maintenance will include compatibility updates, security fixes, documentation improvements, issue triage, and updates required by material Filecoin network changes. Balance will fund ordinary ongoing maintenance after the grant period and will keep the public repository available for community contributions.

# Team

## Team Members

- George Bordianu — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer; executive sponsor and technical oversight
- Vladimir Li — Chief Technology Officer; engineering lead
- Nuno Silva — Chief Product Officer; product and developer-experience lead
- Dustin Plett — Chief Sales Officer; institutional adoption and ecosystem partnerships
- Balance engineering, security, compliance, and risk contributors assigned during delivery

## Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

- George Bordianu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebordianu/
- Vladimir Li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livladimir/
- Nuno Silva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvanuno/
- Dustin Plett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinplett/

## Team Website

https://balance.ca/

## Relevant Experience

Balance provides regulated digital-asset infrastructure to institutions across Canada and the United States. Its platform supports institutional custody, wallet infrastructure, staking, settlement, and tokenization workflows. Balance currently supports more than $2.5 billion in assets under custody, 3 million wallets, and 1 million transactions.

George Bordianu is a second-time founder with an MSc in Computer Science from McGill University and previously served as Director of Engineering at 500px. Vladimir Li is a former Amazon engineer and established infrastructure leader who previously supported systems serving more than 12 million users. Nuno Silva has decades of product experience and helped scale Stocksy United beyond $10 million in annual revenue. Dustin Plett led sales and executive functions at 500px through its growth and acquisition.

The broader management team includes senior finance, audit, compliance, and risk expertise from digital-asset companies, accounting firms, regulated custodians, securities regulation, and global financial institutions.

## Team code repositories

- Grant-funded repository: to be created publicly upon award.
- Balance Custody API documentation: https://balance-1.gitbook.io/balance-custody-api

# Additional Information

Balance identified the Open Grants Program through the Filecoin Foundation grants page and the filecoin-project/devgrants repository.

Best email for grant agreements and next steps: dustin@balance.ca

Balance is applying specifically for the open-source, ecosystem-reusable work described above. Proprietary product features outside these deliverables will be funded by Balance. No grant-funded development will begin before an agreement is signed by both parties.

No existing repository, file, test, or entry point is named; the grant-funded repository is to be created. Start by reviewing the Balance Custody API documentation and the milestone deliverables, then clarify the supported Filecoin and FVM scope. Done means a public dual-licensed TypeScript toolkit, automated tests, reference API workflows, documentation, and the stated testnet/mainnet validation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.