Institutional digital asset custodian Hex Trust has significantly expanded its partnership with the Flare Network to provide regulated financial institutions with secure access to native FLR staking and FXRP minting services. The collaboration, announced on February 5, 2026, combines Flare's underlying protocol infrastructure with Hex Trust's regulated custody, governance, and compliance controls.
The new services are now live for Hex Trust's institutional clients, positioning the custodian as a primary gateway into the Flare ecosystem. The offering allows institutions to mint and redeem FXRP—a non-custodial 1:1 representation of XRP on the Flare network—and to participate directly in native FLR staking through Hex Trust's platform. All actions are governed by the custodian's transaction policy engine, which supports customizable, multi-approval workflows.
According to the firms, this partnership directly addresses key institutional constraints. Many institutions have been hesitant to engage directly with staking or bridging due to the need for hot wallet connections and limited governance controls, often leaving assets like XRP and FLR sidelined. Hex Trust claims its solution maintains a strict chain of custody while enabling participation in Flare's DeFi ecosystem via WalletConnect, allowing access without compromising internal risk frameworks.
Giorgia Pellizzari, CPO and Head of Custody at Hex Trust, stated, "The expansion of token wrapping to assets like XRP marks a significant shift in market structure." She emphasized that the integration allows traditionally static assets to become productive, liquid collateral while remaining within an enterprise-grade governance framework.
Hugo Philion, Co-founder and CEO of Flare, added, "Working with Hex Trust empowers institutions to put their assets to work without compromising on security or compliance." He noted the partnership is designed to unlock smart contract utility for assets that lack native programmability.
The technical foundation is Flare's FAssets system, which enables non-smart contract assets to be represented on-chain in a trust-minimized manner, supporting use cases like staking and lending. The system incorporates external audits, continuous monitoring, and safeguards built with institutional requirements in mind.
This announcement follows Hex Trust's December launch of Wrapped XRP (wXRP) across Ethereum, Solana, Optimism, and HyperEVM with $100 million in initial liquidity, aimed at anchoring Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin pairs on EVM chains. Hex Trust confirmed it will continue to provide secure infrastructure as Flare expands support for other assets like BTC.
