Why Choosing Dfns Over Fireblocks

Choosing wallet infrastructure is not yet another technical decision, it’s one of the most consequential choices a company can make when stepping into the world of digital assets. Your blockchain wallet infrastructure determines how you store funds, automate operations, onboard users and employees, enforce governance, and stay on the right side of regulation. But above all, it’s sticky. Once you choose a provider, switching becomes painful. Migrating keys, policies, signing rights, user entitlements, authentication flows, backup materials, transaction automations, audit logs and so forth is no small feat. It’s complex, high-stakes work, which makes the initial decision all the more delicate.

Dfns is in the business of wallets because we enjoy building the kind of infrastructure that fades into the background when it works, and earns appreciation when it does. Crypto wallets, after all, are the invisible backbone of modern finance. They power programmable money, embedded services, and real-time flows of digital value. But because the stakes are high, many teams default to the loudest name in the room, assuming that market dominance equals safety. 

Today, that default is Fireblocks. They’ve become the corporate go-to, the safe bet on paper. And to be fair, they played their cards well. Between 2021 and 2022, they raised over a billion dollars in less than twelve months and moved quickly to consolidate the market after Curv and a dozen of other alternative vendors were acquired. Even in the aftermath of the Stakehound disaster in spring 2021, they capitalized on the uncertainty and accelerated adoption through aggressive and sometimes opaque strategies. (You can still find remnants of these behind-the-scenes deals in public Github repositories for instance).

They achieved escape velocity and built a strong platform for custody and tokenized asset transfer. And we respect that. At the time, Dfns was barely two years old. We were focused on building—quietly and obsessively—toward a deeper, more robust foundation. Three years on, the needs of the industry have changed dramatically. And today, we keep hearing the same question over and over: “What would it take to move away from Fireblocks?”

Across our history, we’ve seen hundreds of institutions default to Fireblocks, often out of convenience or reputation. At first glance, it feels like a safe bet. It’s widely adopted, has secured significant market share over the past three years, and is known for its user-friendly interface. But behind the glossy dashboard lies a rigid product and security model that can slow your team down, limit your autonomy, and eventually box you into a pricing model and architectural pattern that are difficult to escape.

We’ve gone head-to-head with Fireblocks in nearly every corner of the industry: custodians, banks, crypto-native startups, FMIs, investment platforms, tokenization providers, stablecoin issuers, and more. What actually happens is companies get stuck. The system is hard to integrate with, expensive to scale, and closed in ways that only become obvious too late. And when you ask customers how they feel, they’ll usually respond with a kind of weary pragmatism: “It’s expensive, but it works.” You can imagine how frustrating it is to hear that week after week. Because what it really means is: “We wish we had chosen differently, but the cost of switching feels higher than the pain of staying.”

Fireblocks follows a playbook familiar to anyone who’s dealt with Salesforce: high-friction lock-in, vague roadmap communication, and aggressive sales tactics that often outpace actual product readiness. Dfns, by contrast, was built differently from the start. We took our cues from Stripe, Algolia, and other well-known developer-first platforms. The focus was always to deliver infrastructure that is programmable, composable, and reliable down to the core. Dfns isn’t a dashboard wrapped around an API. It’s an API with performant infrastructure under the hood. And that distinction makes all the difference.

We’ve also consistently heard from teams across the ecosystem that benchmarking wallet infrastructure is frustratingly challenging. It’s hard to find reliable, side-by-side comparisons of what vendors actually offer, how their architecture holds up in real-world use, or whether their roadmaps genuinely align with your product goals. Everyone sounds the same in the pitch, but in practice, the differences are significant. This post is an attempt to make those differences easier to see, understand, and weigh.

And why focus on Fireblocks? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Yes, we run into deeper philosophical debates around the “build vs buy” dilemma. And sure, we occasionally come across setups that mix Safe contracts with AWS KMS or Ledger Nanos as signers. But Fireblocks is the vendor we go head-to-head with almost every single day. They are the default comparison point. Not Taurus, Bitgo, GK8, or Ripple Custody (ex-Metaco). The real conversation, the one that defines most decisions, is with Fireblocks. Which makes them the perfect benchmark for this post.

We’ve structured this Dfns vs. Fireblocks comparison around five key dimensions:

1. The quality and depth of the programming interface
2. The security architecture and custody model
3. The blockchain reliability and performance of services
4. The perception of trust and real-world track records
5. The pricing structures and commitment to cost transparency

To be clear, this isn’t a teardown. It’s a reality check. Our goal is simple: before you commit to a vendor, we want you to get the full picture. Because switching later is hard. And running two providers in parallel can be even harder. Not everyone has the budget or operational slack for redundancy. So the decision you make now—or not—is one that will shape your company’s trajectory for years to come.

Built as a programming interface, not a user interface

Since 2020, Dfns has been built with a clear conviction in the same lineage as Stripe, Twilio, and Algolia: blockchain wallets needed a proper developer platform, not another dashboard. From the very beginning, in the summer of 2019, we asked ourselves a simple question: Why don’t blockchain wallets have its developer tool? Just like Algolia didn’t add APIs to an existing product but made the API the product itself, we designed Dfns for builders, aka tech founders, engineers, architects, and platform teams, integrating wallets into modern, scalable financial systems.

Fireblocks took a different path in the offices of Galaxy Digital in 2018. Their platform was built UI-first, centered around dashboards, trades and manual workflows, aka tools for traders, investors, and asset managers… but not for developers. Their API came later, built to replicate what the UI could already do. It was never really designed to unlock programming, automations and modular builds. That limitation becomes quickly obvious when you try to build anything even slightly outside of their standard operating model. Essentially, what emerges are two very different paradigms: Fireblocks makes it easy to click. Dfns makes it easy to build.

Most people still think of wallets as a UI challenge. Build a dashboard. Add approval flows. Wrap the API. And you’re done, right? Yet, finance doesn’t scale with dashboards. It scales with automation. Fireblocks was built for front-office teams, especially traders and treasury operators. The experience is optimized for clicking, not coding. This makes it accessible but limits its adaptability. Dfns is different. From day one, we built for developers. Every capability in our platform is available over API. Our SDKs are designed for embedding wallets into applications, automating operations, and integrating with core banking systems. Our policy engine is programmatic. Our webhook system supports real-time monitoring and dynamic workflows. When you build with Dfns, you’re not confined to our UI. You’re in control.

Actually, I’d even argue that most wallet infrastructure platforms are designed around a user interface first, exposing limited programmatic access later as a convenience. Fireblocks is just a clear example of this pattern. Its console remains the primary surface, and its APIs often serve as partial, fragmented extensions. Dfns, by contrast, was architected as a true programming interface from day one. The dashboard is simply another client of the same robust APIs available to every developer. This fundamental difference is visible everywhere: in how workflows are modeled, in how governance is implemented, and in the level of autonomy developers can achieve.

In our opinion, the modern wallet infrastructure must give developers full programmatic control over wallet generation, transaction lifecycle orchestration, tagging and indexing, compliance controls, policies, user permissions and many other commands. These are table stakes. In a detailed comparison of over 420 endpoints between Dfns and Fireblocks, we found that 145 endpoints implemented in Dfns are entirely missing from Fireblocks and 24 endpoints were not available “out of the box.” Many of these are not fringe cases but critical primitives, covering authentication, key lifecycle management, webhook creation and control, governance, compliance and detailed wallet operations. When these foundations are missing, clients are forced to toggle between API calls and manual dashboard operations, or worse, rebuild core pieces themselves. 

For full access to the spreadsheet, contact sales@dfns.co 

Wallet management

Wallet creation and management offer a clear example. Dfns allows developers not only to create wallets, but also to update them, delegate control to end-users, tag them with custom metadata, and track their full transactional histories, all through straightforward APIs. Fireblocks, in contrast, lacks support for wallet delegation entirely and offers only limited tagging functionality. Developers trying to build sophisticated Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) platforms or embedded financial products on Fireblocks are forced into awkward workarounds, undermining user experience and complicating compliance workflows.

Transaction management

Digital asset use cases are practically endless, ranging from simple token transfers to intricate, multi-step interactions using arbitrary smart contract logics. Most infrastructure providers optimize for the basics and stop there. But Dfns was built with a broader ambition: to support use cases far beyond fund managers and manual operations. That’s why our transaction APIs are designed to handle everything from the most basic to the most complex flows, without cornering developers into rigid templates.

As a result, we expose 3 different levels of transaction APIs:

• Transfer Assets: for clean, no-fuss token transfers. Dfns handles transaction construction and broadcasting, so developers can focus on product logic instead of plumbing. (High convenience, low autonomy.)
• Broadcast Transaction: for more involved workflows like smart contracts, custom payloads, or unusual chains. Dfns builds the transaction; you handle the broadcast. (Medium convenience, medium autonomy.)
• Generate Signature: for when you want full control. Dfns signs what you send. No assumptions, no automation. You manage the data, the flow, and the final send-off of the payload. (Low convenience, high autonomy.)

Once a transaction is initiated, Dfns provides native integrations to track its progress, manage its lifecycle, and apply policy or governance enforcement as needed. Every step is observable and auditable, so reconciliation, compliance, and security are never afterthoughts. And just to be clear: every API we show here works across 50+ blockchains (with more on the way), all through a single unified interface.

While our transfer asset APIs offer flexibility and control, Fireblocks' APIs are built around basic transactions, mostly geared toward moving assets within their own “Vaults”.

Governance and compliance

Governance and compliance controls further reveal the gap between the two approaches. At Dfns, policies are fully programmable. Developers define activities, rules, actions, and filters in code, integrating approvals seamlessly into their systems. When a policy triggers, a webhook is fired and clients can respond programmatically with approval or denial, tying compliance directly to transaction flows. Fireblocks offers no comparable API exposure. Policy management is hidden behind a dashboard UI and cannot be orchestrated dynamically, meaning approval workflows cannot adapt in real time or integrate easily with existing enterprise systems.

At the heart of the Dfns platform, policies act as gates: each must be satisfied before any sensitive activity proceeds. To maximize flexibility, we’ve distilled policies into a few key building blocks:

• Activity: What kind of action the policy should guard.
• Rule: The condition that determines whether the policy is triggered.
• Action: What happens if the rule is met.
• Filters: Optional tags to refine scope and context.

When a policy is triggered, a RequestApproval webhook event is emitted. Clients can respond programmatically by creating an ApprovalDecision tied to the event’s ApprovalID.

Combining the Dfns policy engine with external integrations like Chainalysis lets our customers define finely tuned, complex compliance rules, then execute them seamlessly as part of their transaction flow. With Fireblocks, even the most basic form of policy orchestration isn’t possible through their API.

Another approach to API security

From a security perspective, Dfns takes a fundamentally different—and we think safer—approach to verifying that communication between customer applications and our infrastructure is authentic. Fireblocks uses a static API key to let customers interact with their wallets. While that’s standard for low-risk applications, it falls short when dealing with onchain financial transactions or institutional-grade security. If that key is ever leaked, intercepted, or misused, the consequences can be severe, such as the total compromise of the customer’s assets.

Instead, Dfns leverages WebAuthn-based API signing for all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests, a method built on asymmetric public key cryptography. Put differently, every mutating action inside Dfns—whether via API or dashboard—is cryptographically signed by the client (end-user or employee). The result: an indisputable audit trail, with verifiable proof of who did what, when, and how.

We follow NIST cybersecurity and key management frameworks and best practices by keeping cryptographic keys in secure, network-hosted environments well away from the customer’s high-risk application surfaces. We call this the “network-hosted key” (NHK) model (1) (2). Fireblocks, by contrast, blend key storage with user access, keeping keys on end-user devices such as phones. This collapses control, access, and risk into an adverserial, exposed surface. We call this the “user-hosted keys” (UHK) model. It’s a fundamentally fragile setup for anything meant to be bulletproof, and an architectural leftover from the “name and shame” era, when Metamask fans were pointing fingers at anyone not hosting keys into browsers and calling it “decentralized” or “non-custodial.”

The many risks and delays

The architectural gaps at Fireblocks create real-world consequences. Developers are forced to make critical design decisions themselves, increasing the risk of mistakes that could lead to security incidents or financial loss. Integrations that should take weeks drag into quarters. Teams spend cycles patching missing functionality instead of building value for their users. In many cases, use cases simply become impossible to implement within Fireblocks’ rigid framework. Based on our estimates, integrating all Fireblocks APIs would take 4 to 6 months, while integrating all Dfns APIs would take just 2 to 4 weeks.

Consider Fireblocks’ Key Link feature for connecting to external HSMs. While heavily marketed, it lacks a PKCS-compatible connector, requiring clients to build their own for instance. Dfns, recognizing the gap, carved out two months from its roadmap to build a PKCS connector and allow its clients to integrate HSMs seamlessly without writing custom software. This is not an isolated example but emblematic of a deeper difference where Dfns simplifies the developer experience while Fireblocks makes it harder.

The key takeaway here is that APIs shouldn’t be seen as features, they’re a lens on the architecture itself. When your provider gives you programmatic access to every critical function, it opens the door to entirely new use cases. Eg: You can build fintech apps with embedded wallets, where each end user has their own secure key and policy. You can automate multi-party signing flows across teams, locations, or regulatory environments. You can write infrastructure that reacts to blockchain state, orchestrates funds in real time, and keeps an auditable record of every action taken. You can enforce compliance rules without relying on dashboards, toggles, or error-prone human workflows. With Fireblocks, you will sooner or later hit a ceiling and toggle rules in their UI, deal with rigid roles, or lack read-only views. With Dfns, you build flows as code, integrated with your systems and enforced at the protocol level.

Where Dfns is catching up

Granted: Dfns is not perfect either, and they’ve had more time and resources to build out certain APIs we don’t. However, in Q2 and Q3 2025, Dfns will expand its APIs with new programmable endpoints: 

• Travel Rule integrations with Notabene, Ospree, and VerifyVASP
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• Wallet Groups, User Groups, and Sub-Organizations to organize permissions and workflows
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• Tokenization service integration and contract import with Bitbond, Tokeny, Zoniqx, and others
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• Fiat account integrations with Thunes, Stripe, Aspire, Cross River, and others
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• Transfer Network, off-exchange settlement, and address book management

A tale of two architectures and two philosophies

Opposite key security and information architectures

Security failures rarely happen at the UI level. They tend to occur deeper down in the cryptographic or architectural foundations, hidden in assumptions that go unchallenged until it's too late. 

A good example: the default use of HD wallets. It's a common pattern in crypto, a legacy from the days when keys lived inside HSMs with limited memory. To save space, engineers leaned on key derivation (read: one root key spawning many child keys). But times have changed. Secure cloud infrastructure and confidential computing are now the norm. The original constraints no longer apply, yet HD wallets remain. And they bring security baggage. Fireblocks, for instance, still relies on BIP39 hierarchical deterministic keys. One root key can generate every wallet in a workspace via derivations. It’s efficient for provisioning, but it introduces a central point of failure. Compromise the root, and the entire structure collapses. One breach becomes systemic. Dfns takes a fundamentally different approach. Each key is generated from unique entropy—no master key, no hierarchy, no inheritance. One key, one purpose. This breaks the chain of trust that allows failures to propagate, and it drastically reduces the blast radius of any attack.

But key generation is only the start. Where and how cryptographic material is stored matters just as much, if not more. Fireblocks distributes MPC key shares to users’ mobile devices through their app. While that might sound empowering, it opens the door to a host of vulnerabilities: lost phones, SIM swaps, malware, accidental wipes, and the entire buffet of physical attacks. Mobile devices are inherently very adversarial environments. Even the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) advises against storing sensitive key material inside application-layer devices like phones and laptops. That’s why Dfns, from day one, has taken a different route. We completely separate authentication credentials from key material, and adhere strictly to NIST guidelines. The MPC keys (unless you prefer connecting your HSM with Dfns) live in hardened environments built to resist compromise, reduce human error, and isolate endpoint risk.

In the Dfns model, the policy engine operates at the API layer and evaluates transaction conditions before triggering an MPC signing process. Think of it as an multi-layered intent-based system, just like a core banking systems. Signing through the API does not immediately produce a valid signature. It initiates a flow through several microservices that verify identity, permissions, and intent. Only after these checks are satisfied does the system proceed to the MPC ceremony. Key shares are generated using Distributed Key Generation and stored in a distributed, encrypted, multi-region environment (e.g., AWS KMS-managed). This model ensures a strict separation between governance and security. Unlike user-hosted key (UHK) models (think Fireblocks, Coinbase Wallet, Metamask, etc.) where key custody and policy enforcement are entangled and prone to misconfiguration, our network-hosted key (NHK) approach enforces controls independently of the signer. It prevents bypasses and improves both reliability and security.

API access is another pressure point. Fireblocks relies on a single server-side token to authenticate API requests, just like 99% of wallet vendors. The problem? If that token leaks (and it sits on your infra), attackers can move funds without a trace. Dfns avoids that trap entirely. We use WebAuthn, the W3C open-source protocol based on strong two-factor authentication and asymmetric cryptography. Every sensitive action is signed and verifiable. No one—not even us—can act on your behalf. 

To summarize:

• Key Generation: This is the origin of security. It’s not meant to be seen or noticed. And yet, if it's flawed, everything downstream is compromised. If it’s done right, you never hear about it.
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• Key Management: Protecting keys isn’t just about encryption. It’s about where keys live, who has access, and what happens when the unexpected occurs.
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• API Authentication: This is the front door. If someone walks through it, they don’t just see data—they move money. Yet most systems treat it like a login prompt, not a vault door.
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Two ways of approaching custodial vs non-custodial wallets

Relative to security, the question of custody is also very much often misunderstood. It’s not binary. It’s not custodial or non-custodial. In reality, custody is a spectrum shaped by how you assign key control, infrastructure ownership, regulatory compliance, and operational responsibilities. We discussed this topic in great lengths previously. With that said, though custodianship is mostly defined on a legal, regulatory and contractual basis, there are always technical properties, controls and guarantees that are attached to each status so it’s worth diving into the strengths and weaknesses of the infrastructure that will enable either custodial or non-custodial setups.

Fireblocks, because of its default utilization of HD wallets, is in jeopardy when trying to offer non-custodial capabilities based on our technical reasoning. All wallets are derived from a common key, and the system is fundamentally designed to keep control centralized. This works well for asset managers or operations teams running a treasury desk. But it is incompatible with embedded wallet experiences where the promise is to guarantee users control over keys and assets, or use cases requiring regulatory separation of duties for instance.

Dfns supports full non-custodial architectures. You can delegate control of wallet keys to end-users, ops teams, or even external compliance providers using claimable wallets that can be delegated via service accounts. This flexibility means you can build apps where the user controls the money movements, or infrastructure where sensitive operations are segmented across departments. We allow you to configure who holds the keys and who never sees them. 

With Dfns, custody is something you define. Not something we impose. We don’t believe custody is something you “are.” It’s something you design for and every organization needs something slightly different. A fintech building embedded wallets, a bank running tokenization rails, and a marketplace securing escrow flows don’t need the same custody model. And they shouldn’t have to choose between rigid extremes. That’s why we built Dfns to be flexible by design. We separate key control from infrastructure control. We allow secrets to live where they’re needed: with users, with ops teams, with compliance layers. We do so without forcing a single custody stance across the board. Because in the real world, custody is a spectrum. And infrastructure should reflect that.

More about our custody model and information security architecture can be found here. 

Comparing the boring stuff that actually matters (a lot)

Monolithic by default vs modular by design

We’ve heard it more times than we can count: “Fireblocks is a black box.” People in the industry say that for a reason: it’s likely the result of a company that’s grown comfortable with its size and no longer feels the need to expose or audit parts of its SaaS product, even for its biggest clients. Fireblocks locks every client into a narrow setup: MPC-only, BIP39-derived keys, mobile-based signing via QR codes or Bluetooth. All keys ultimately trace back to a single root seed. Composable? Hardly. Configurable? Only within the walls they set.

Dfns gives you a toolkit. We’ve built out our platform to be modular by design. You choose how and where your keys live—our cloud, your cloud, your HSMs, secure enclaves, or multi-region hybrids, etc. We support both MPC and non-MPC deployments, giving you actual architectural control over your cryptographic infrastructure. Everything runs in Kubernetes, with infrastructure-as-code and full lifecycle automation built-in. This means repeatable deployments, secure-by-default configs, and the freedom to scale without starting over. But composability is just the beginning. 

Powerful onchain transaction reliability at scale

Over the years, many Fireblocks clients have come our way fed up with inconsistent APIs, SLA-breaking downtime, slow rollout of new chains, and support escalations that lead nowhere. Dfns was built differently. Our infrastructure and devops practices are rooted in multi-region, high-availability cloud, with layered redundancy baked in. While Fireblocks relies on fragmented, device-bound signing—causing variable latency, flaky sessions, and brittle communication—Dfns runs on a tightly integrated, mTLS-secured service mesh. Every key operation is fast, verifiable, and recoverable. We’ve optimized everything down to the network layer for performance, resilience, and reliability.

Then there’s KU23, our patent-pending MPC protocol for ECDSA, currently the fastest in production. And Givre, our Rust implementation of FROST for EdDSA. These aren’t just academic milestones; they’re designed for raw signing speed and industrial-grade reliability. KU23 and Givre have been critical for clients like payment service providers who went live while Fireblocks suffered repeated outages and SLA-breaking failures. These protocols don’t just beat benchmarks, they keep businesses running when others stall. It’s not hype. It’s operational survival. When payments fail, users don’t just refresh the page and they walk away. That’s also why Dfns now operates its own blockchain node infrastructure. Dedicated, cross-validated, chain by chain. This means:

• No dependence on unreliable third-party RPCs
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• Full observability into mempools, logs, and transaction states
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• Real-time failover and traffic redirection
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• Transaction reindexing and rebroadcasting for stuck flows
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• API-level idempotency to prevent duplicate transactions

These aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the reason platforms like Bridge (now part of Stripe) and Iron (now part of MoonPay) trust us to handle thousands of daily transactions across Ethereum, Solana, Base, Tron, and Polygon with near-zero failure rates. Even during the Solana congestion crisis earlier this year, our clients saw their transactions go through without manual intervention. No re-signing, no resubmitting. Just clean recovery via smart retries, signature reordering, and proactive status checks.

Surface-level chain support vs real chain integration

Fireblocks takes a selective approach to blockchain support. Each year, an “annual chain committee” decides which networks make the cut. Integration, if it happens, takes quarters. More niche or permissioned networks? Often dismissed or they’re being asked to pay over $1 million. And even when support is announced, it usually boils down to basic transaction broadcasting and nothing more. 

Dfns takes a different path. We’ve always prided ourselves on moving fast to help ecosystems grow. Our platform supports a wide and growing list of blockchains—Ethereum and EVMs, Solana, Tron, Aptos, Cosmos appchains, and 50+ more. But support isn’t just a checkbox. When Dfns integrates a blockchain, we go as deep as our clients want us to. That means:

• Automatic token detection (no need for manual indexing)
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• Full send, receive, and withdraw capabilities, via API and UI
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• Advanced features like fee sponsorship and confidential balances
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• Real-time balance and transfer notifications via webhook
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• Full transaction history, tracked and streamed as it happens
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• Seamless signing, transaction building, and broadcasting—via a single API

Onboarding a new blockchain? We average under 4 weeks. And yes, that includes permissioned and less known networks others won’t even look at.

Client support that’s highly engaged, not hierarchical

Fireblocks uses the old-school ticketing hierarchy. You get assigned a junior rep, who escalates to someone else, who might loop in yet another team. Urgent requests get stuck, complex ones bounce around, and time keeps ticking. 

Dfns does it differently. No tiers, just threads. You’ll talk directly to the people who built the system: engineers, product managers, cryptographers, even execs when needed. No filters, no handoffs, just straight answers from the source. At Dfns, support isn’t a department, it’s part of the product. Because infrastructure doesn’t just run on code, it runs on people. And when those people are sharp, accessible, and accountable, things don’t just stay online, they move forward fast.

• Sub-hour response times on Pro and Enterprise plans
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• Even Basic clients usually get live replies
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• G2 support score: 9.7 (Fireblocks: 9.3)
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• No bots, no loops—just real people solving real problems

No one got fired for buying IBM… but Fireblocks is not IBM

And then there’s the trust factor. As a younger company, we often face the usual questions: Will Dfns still be around in five years? Will Dfns get acquired, disrupted, or run out of runway? Can Dfns’ security hold at scale? There’s a common reflex that kicks in halfway through any benchmark: big company = safe company. And it’s understandable, but it’s not always accurate.

Let’s first set the record straight. Fireblocks has been tied to several major security failures, including the $75 million loss with Stakehound and the collapse of Fortress and Prime Trust, largely due to key mismanagement and missing security support. Their SOC and ISO reports are no longer verified by Big Four firms. They failed DORA compliance over basic gaps, like not being able to show evidence of clear and robust segregation of duties for example. And despite raising over a billion dollars, their secondary shares now trade at a steep discount, pushing them toward aggressive pricing to keep growth up. Their product remains a black box, even to the most seasoned teams in the space and their own investors.

Dfns has still never experienced a breach or any security issue leading to loss of funds in 5 years. Our systems are audited by Deloitte, KPMG, and dozens of others. We’re profitable and not over valued—we have “only” raised $30M—with impossible revenue targets to achieve. We support hybrid and on-premises deployments. Our roadmap is public, clear, and easy to follow. And we work hand in hand with IBM and Thales. So when we hear “Dfns is a startup, we trust Fireblocks more,” we suggest looking closer. Trust shouldn’t rest on age or capital raised, but on transparency, auditability, and a solid track record.

Two pricing models: one built to squeeze, another to serve

Fireblocks kept their pricing off the record for years, and Dfns was one of the reasons they finally budged. In 2022, they introduced what they called internally an “anti-Dfns pricing” tier, matching our now-standard $6K/year Basic Plan. We’ll take the win: we dragged the floor a bit lower for everyone.

That said, their pricing model is still murky. It often relies on predicted transaction volumes and comes loaded with setup fees and other hidden charges. Want to integrate a KYT provider? You’ll end up paying both the KYT vendor and Fireblocks. Even webhooks are treated as premium features. We’ve seen pricing proposals for unfunded startups that lock them into 3- to 4-year deals ranging from $60–80K/year at the start to $600–800K/year down the line. These inflated contracts help Fireblocks tell a nice story to investors, aka growth on paper, but make it nearly impossible for teams to budget or compare options.

Dfns does it differently. Our pricing is transparent, usage-based, and fully documented. No AUM fees, no hidden costs, no surprises. We’re not pretending to be a financial institution; we’re a technology provider for financial institutions. Taking basis points on AUM or cuts of transaction fees? That’s the job of banks, PSPs, and trading platforms; not wallet infrastructure providers. We know blockchain finance is still early, and the ecosystem needs breathing room to grow. With Dfns, you can estimate your costs before the first call. For teams that care about predictability and scale, that makes all the difference.

Many want to leave Fireblocks, but they’re afraid to

We talk to companies who want to leave Fireblocks on a regular basis. They’ve either outgrown the product, need features Fireblocks doesn’t offer, or are simply tired of the vendor lock-in. But there’s always hesitation. Not because Dfns feels risky, but because wallet infrastructure touches money, and any change that touches money feels risky by default. Fireblocks lean into that fear. They’ll tell you that migrating your wallet infrastructure is dangerous, that you’re putting your funds at risk. You might even get a call from a salesperson or an executive trying to intimidate you if you think of announcing a partnership with Dfns (yes, this has happened to several of our clients). But let’s be clear: the only real risk is theirs. When you leave Fireblocks, they lose a customer. You don’t lose control.

To be clear: we’re not here to beat Fireblocks at being Fireblocks. We’re building something fundamentally different: future-proof, developer-first, policy-centric infrastructure for blockchain. Something more flexible, more transparent, and more aligned with how real businesses operate today. If you’re building onchain payment rails, tokenizing assets, launching financial products, or scaling custody across multiple teams and jurisdictions, Dfns is the stronger foundation. And switching doesn’t have to be painful. In our next article, we’ll walk through key migration, how to re-import signing rights and policies, and why changing your wallet stack shouldn’t feel like brain surgery. It should feel like progress.

Dfns and Fireblocks reflect two different philosophies. Fireblocks gives you a good interface tailored for treasurers. Dfns gives you composable building blocks for fintech. If you’re an institution looking to scale digital asset operations, automate governance, or launch new products, Dfns gives you the infrastructure you actually want, delivering real control, performance, and transparency. Don’t let convenience today become regret tomorrow. Choose infrastructure you can build on.