Cobo

Cobo is a company that keeps crypto safe for businesses. This is the Singapore firm at cobo.com, with no link to the Detroit arena.

Cobo was founded in 2017. Exchanges, payment firms and funds use it to hold crypto and move it safely. Its main product is called Wallet-as-a-Service. A business plugs into it with code and gets wallets it can control, without having to build the key security itself.

Cobo sells four kinds of wallet, led by its MPC wallet. MPC splits a private key into pieces, so no one party holds the whole key. In April 2026 Cobo added a wallet made for AI agents. Solana is one of more than 80 blockchains that Cobo supports.

How Cobo custody and MPC wallets work

Cobo holds a company's crypto, or signs alongside the company, and the company runs it all through an API and a dashboard called Cobo Portal. The setup depends on the wallet type. In a custodial wallet, Cobo looks after the keys for you. In an MPC wallet, the key is split into shares and you hold one of them yourself.

Cobo's documentation describes a typical 2-of-3 MPC arrangement. You hold one key share. Cobo holds a second. A third-party recovery provider that you choose keeps the third share offline.

Two shares are needed to sign a transaction, so day to day that means you and Cobo. Neither side can move funds alone. If your share is stolen or lost, the wallet makes a fresh set of shares.

The third share exists for the bad day. Cobo's docs say that if the Cobo MPC service ever stops running, you can work with the recovery provider to rebuild the root private key and take full control of your funds. Think of it as a spare key held by a locksmith you picked, kept in a safe until you need it.

On top of signing sits a set of rules. In Cobo Portal you set spending rules, approval steps and user roles. Your team approves transactions in a phone app called Cobo Guard, which also manages key shares for MPC wallet users. Cobo's homepage lists Chainalysis and Elliptic as its partners for screening transactions for money-laundering risk.

Cobo wallet types: custodial, MPC, smart contract and exchange wallets

Cobo sells four wallet types behind one API, and each suits a different job. With a custodial wallet, Cobo keeps the keys. With an MPC wallet, you and Cobo share control. A smart contract wallet puts the approval rules on the blockchain. An exchange wallet tracks the funds you keep on trading sites.

Cobo custodial wallet

A custodial wallet is the simplest to run, because Cobo holds the keys. Cobo's homepage says it keeps 90% to 95% of these funds in cold storage, which means offline. The trade-off is that you rely fully on Cobo to release your funds.

Cobo MPC wallet

MPC wallets come in two forms. The first is for a company's own funds, and Cobo calls it an Organization-Controlled Wallet. The second is a User-Controlled Wallet. It is for apps that want each user to hold a key share on their own phone. Cobo's developer guide lets the app pick how many shares must sign, and users can back up their share to iCloud.

Smart contract and exchange wallets

Smart contract wallets are on-chain accounts with approval rules written in code. Cobo's company timeline lists support for Safe{Wallet} and MetaMask Institutional, both added in 2022.

Exchange wallets let a firm move funds across its exchange accounts from one screen. The Cobo developer hub names Binance, OKX, Bybit and Deribit among the exchanges it works with.

Cobo wallet price

Cobo does not publish a price list. In a post from June 2025, Cobo said it charges by usage and does not lock clients into yearly contracts. Expect to get a quote from its sales team.

Cobo Agentic Wallet: how AI agents sign on-chain

Cobo Agentic Wallet, or CAW, is a wallet that lets an AI agent make on-chain transactions inside limits a person sets. Cobo launched it on 20 April 2026. The agent can act on its own within those limits, and it cannot sign anything outside them.

The limits live in what Cobo calls a Pact. A Pact is a permission slip written for one task. It says what the agent may do, where it must stop and when the permission ends. Cobo says each Pact is created per task and expires once the task is done.

Every request then runs through a policy engine before it reaches signing. Cobo's CAW manual lists three checks: whether the action fits the Pact, whether it passes the owner's rules, and whether it stays under rolling spend limits. A request is allowed, held for the owner's approval, or denied.

Here is how that plays out. You tell an agent to buy a set amount of a token each week. The Pact covers those purchases and nothing else. If the agent tries to send funds to an unknown address, the request is denied or held for you to review.

CAW launched in MPC Mode, where every transaction needs the user's co-signature. Cobo's release describes signing as shared between the user, the agent and Cobo's systems. The Block reported the launch and Cobo's central claim: a hacked agent, a confused model or leaked credentials cannot produce a valid signature alone.

At launch, Cobo listed a Custodial Mode for fast, small payments as "coming soon". Cobo named integrations with LangChain, OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude MCP, Agno and CrewAI, and said CAW covers more than 80 blockchains, Solana included. An iOS app lets owners approve requests and revoke active Pacts. Cobo has not published pricing for CAW.

Cobo Settlement Network for stablecoin trades

Cobo Settlement Network is a service for two firms that want to swap stablecoins for cash. Cobo launched it on 28 July 2026. It works like an escrow. Both sides pay in first, and the swap happens only once both payments are in.

The two firms agree a trade between themselves. The cash goes into a bank sub-account set up for the trade. The stablecoins go into a Cobo custody account. Cobo checks and locks both. Once both firms sign in Cobo Guard, the system sends each side its funds at the same moment.

The point is that neither firm has to pay first and hope the other follows. That matters most for firms that are new to each other.

Cobo's launch post leaves some gaps. It does not name the banks, the stablecoins or the blockchains it uses. It says the currencies on offer depend on "actual service availability". It also says each service agreement sets what happens when a trade fails. Ask for those details before you rely on it.

Does Cobo support Solana?

Yes. Solana is on Cobo's list of supported chains, and Cobo's developer docs include guides written for Solana. Cobo runs alongside Solana as a service. It has no Solana program of its own, so you cannot read its custody code on a block explorer.

Two details from the docs matter if you build on Solana with Cobo.

The first is token account rent. On Solana, each token a wallet holds needs its own small account. Opening one costs a deposit called rent. Cobo's Solana rent guide says the sender pays this rent when the receiver has never held that token. The guide also warns that Cobo's fee field shows only the network fee and leaves rent out. If you send to many new addresses, you need to track rent on your own books.

The second is swaps. Cobo has a guide to swapping tokens through Jupiter from a Cobo wallet. Your code asks Jupiter JUP$0.295-1.3% for a route, then sends the swap through Cobo's API. The wallet needs enough SOL to pay the fees.

Staking is less clear. In May 2026 Cobo published a staking guide that lists SOL among the coins its staking service covers. The one named staking partner we could confirm is Figment, and that link-up covers Ethereum only. If SOL staking matters to you, ask Cobo which validators it uses. Then check those validators' commission and uptime yourself.

Who Cobo is for

Cobo is built for businesses that hold crypto for other people or move large sums on-chain. It suits exchanges, payment firms, funds and app builders who need many wallets under clear rules. It is the wrong choice for one person who wants a Solana wallet for their own use.

Cobo fits best in three cases:

• You need wallets on many chains from one API, with Solana next to Ethereum, Tron and others.
• You want to pick the wallet type for each job, such as a custodial wallet for daily payments and an MPC wallet for reserves.
• You are building AI agents that spend money, and you need hard limits on what they can sign.

There are limits to weigh. You sign up through a sales team, and prices are not public. Cobo's main markets are in Asia, with its head office in Singapore and a regional base in Hong Kong. If you need a custodian that holds a United States bank charter, read the Cobo vs BitGo notes before you choose.

Is Cobo safe? Security record, certifications and risks

Cobo says it has had zero security breaches since 2017. Our search of outside coverage in October 2026 found no report of one. That is a strong record. The main risks are that you depend on a private company, and that much of the proof comes from Cobo itself.

Cobo certifications and licences

Cobo's homepage says it is SOC 2 Type II certified and ISO 27001 compliant. These are outside checks of how a company handles security and data. They do not review every line of wallet code.

The homepage also says Cobo is licensed in Hong Kong and the United States. Cobo has described its Hong Kong licence as a Trust or Company Service Provider licence. In November 2025, The Asian Banker reported that Cobo was still working on its Singapore licence.

Cobo's track record

Cobo has shared one clear case of its controls at work. It comes from a Cobo press release. On 2 November 2022, Cobo's risk system flagged an odd withdrawal request for Deribit funds that Cobo held. Cobo told Deribit, and withdrawals were halted. This is Cobo's own account of the event.

What can go wrong with Cobo

• Custody risk. In a custodial wallet, Cobo holds the keys. If Cobo freezes, fails or is ordered to block an account, you wait on Cobo.
• Reliance in MPC. In the usual MPC setup, Cobo co-signs every transaction. If Cobo is offline, you cannot sign until you run the recovery process with your third-party provider. Test that process before you need it.
• Closed systems. Cobo's custody runs off-chain. There is no public Solana program to inspect, so you rely on audits and contracts.
• New products. CAW launched in April 2026 and the Settlement Network in July 2026. Neither has a long record yet. An agent wallet also carries the risk of the agent. A Pact limits the damage, and a badly written Pact limits less.
• Self-reported figures. Cobo's About page says it has secured more than $3.8 trillion in transactions and serves more than 500 clients. We could not check these against an outside source.

Fake Cobo wallet sites

Solana Compass searched Google for "cobo wallet" on 7 October 2026. Several top results were copycat pages on free website hosts. They used Cobo's name and login wording. Cobo's real site is cobo.com. Check the address bar before you type in a password or a key.

Cobo vs Fireblocks and BitGo

Cobo's closest rivals are Fireblocks and BitGo. Cobo's edge is choice: four wallet types in one place. Fireblocks is known for MPC wallets. BitGo has the stronger standing with regulators in the United States. The best fit depends on where you work and what your regulator expects.

Cobo has published its own side-by-side posts. Read them as a seller's view.

Against Fireblocks, Cobo's June 2025 post makes three points. Cobo offers four wallet types, while it says Fireblocks focuses on MPC. Cobo says it never stores the client's own key share. And Cobo says it bills by usage with no yearly contract. The post gives Fireblocks no credit at all, so check Fireblocks' side for yourself.

Against BitGo, Cobo's May 2026 post is more balanced. Cobo credits BitGo with a federal bank charter in the United States, a stock market listing and more than 12 years of custody work. Cobo's pitch is range. It says it supports more tokens, covers chains such as Solana and TON, and lets clients list new tokens themselves.

Here is a simple way to choose. If a United States regulator or auditor must approve your custodian, BitGo's bank charter counts for a lot, and Cobo's post does not claim to match it. If you want several wallet types and wide chain support from a firm based in Asia, Cobo is the more natural fit.

Cobo founders, funding and the Cobo Vault hardware wallet

Cobo was started in 2017 by Shixing Mao and Dr. Changhao Jiang. Mao, known online as Discus Fish, founded the Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool. Jiang is Cobo's chief technology officer.

Jiang was an engineer at Facebook and Google before Cobo. He also co-founded Bihang, a wallet later bought by OKCoin, according to TechCrunch.

Cobo began with products for everyday users. TechCrunch's report from October 2018 covered Cobo's $13 million Series A round. At the time Cobo was based in Beijing. It sold a phone app called Cobo Wallet and a hardware wallet called Cobo Vault.

Cobo's company timeline shows what came next. Cobo moved its head office to Singapore in 2020. A year later it raised a $40 million Series B round led by DST Global, IMO Ventures and A&T Capital.

If you are looking for the Cobo Vault hardware wallet, it now goes by another name. The hardware line changed its name from Cobo Vault to Keystone in June 2021, per Bitcoin Magazine. Cobo's own site now sells only to businesses.

On 20 April 2026, Cobo said that Hong Kong's Financial Secretary had picked it as a Strategic Enterprise Partner. Cobo plans to set up a regional head office in Hong Kong. It expects to invest several hundred million Hong Kong dollars there by 2030.