Arcus × Privy: Self Custody at the Gate

Every derivatives venue is a stack of architectural decisions, and the trader’s first encounter with that stack is the wallet. For most of DeFi’s history, that first encounter has also been the moment where capital and intent ran into a wall - seed phrases, browser extensions, dedicated wallet setup - before a single deposit could be made. The trade-off was treated as inherent, and the trader base that wouldn’t cross that gap was, by definition, not the trader base.

Arcus is built on the position that this trade-off is no longer necessary.

Arcus x Privy Partnership

Today, Arcus is announcing its partnership with Privy, the wallet infrastructure that will power user onboarding and wallet management across Arcus’ web and mobile experience. New users sign up with email, Google, or social logins and receive a self-custody wallet - provisioned in a secure enclave, with the private key never exposed to Arcus, to Privy, or to any intermediary.

Existing web3 users can also connect MetaMask, Ledger, WalletConnect, and hundreds of other Ethereum-compatible wallets directly through the same integration. Both paths produce the same architectural outcome: the user holds their keys, and the custody of their funds remains in their hands.

This integration is one of several pieces of infrastructure that determine whether Arcus can deliver on its broader thesis - a derivatives venue listing real worlds assets, built for traders who have historically been forced to choose between DeFi’s self-custody and TradFi’s accessibility. Wallet infrastructure is the entry point to that proposition. Privy is what makes the entry point work.

“Most of the world has never had a brokerage account, but almost everyone has an email address. When signing in is all it takes to hold a self-custody wallet, the addressable audience for a venue like Arcus stops being ‘crypto users’ and becomes anyone with a market view. That’s the shift we build for.”

— Henri Stern, CEO, Privy - needs confirmation

Why Privy

Privy is the wallet infrastructure of choice for consumer-facing crypto products that take both user experience and self-custody seriously. Its embedded wallets are generated inside secure enclaves, with keys that never touch the application layer. A single integration handles email, social, and external wallet flows, letting Arcus serve crypto-native and TradFi-curious users through one onboarding stack. And the infrastructure is proven at scale across DeFi, payments, and consumer applications engineered for the reliability that high-volume sign-in flows demand.

The combination matters because Arcus is not building only for the trader base that already exists on perp DEXes. It is also building for the trader base that will exist when 24/7 derivatives stop feeling like a sub-genre of crypto and start behaving like the next layer of global market access.

The infrastructure work Privy does behind that experience is what lets Arcus meet these individuals on those terms - without compromising the security model that makes the product worth using in the first place.

“Every serious venue eventually learns that its real competitor isn’t another exchange - it’s the sign-up screen. We’re listing markets people have wanted access to their whole lives; the last thing standing between them and a position shouldn’t be a seed phrase.”

— Eddie Zhang, CEO, Arcus

Arcus is in early access. Join the waitlist at arcus.xyz.