BridgePort Pilots Digital Asset Master Agreement to Streamline Off-Exchange Settlement Onboarding

New industry framework is designed to accelerate institutional adoption of off-exchange
settlement by giving trading firms, custodians, and venues a shared legal standard inspired by
the ISDA Master Agreement

NEW YORK, July 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- BridgePort, the middleware coordination layer for institutional crypto, today announced that it is piloting the Digital Asset Master Agreement ("DAMA"), a common legal standard for off-exchange settlement ("OES") relationships between trading firms, custodians, and exchanges. Rather than negotiating each new OES relationship from scratch, participants can use DAMA as a common starting point for establishing tri-party settlement arrangements. BridgePort is now forming a working group of trading firms, custodians, and exchanges to pilot DAMA across live off-exchange settlement relationships.

As institutional trading of digital assets continues to grow, off-exchange settlement has emerged as an increasingly important component of market structure. By allowing trading firms to keep assets with a custodian while trading across multiple exchanges, OES can improve capital efficiency and reduce counterparty exposure. However, each new OES arrangement often requires extensive legal negotiations among trading firms, custodians, and trading venues, creating onboarding delays that are costly and take months to resolve.

DAMA will function as a common legal foundation to reuse across multiple OES relationships rather than bespoke agreements for each new connection. It combines the consistency of a shared standard with the flexibility of a configurable template, allowing counterparties to reflect their own regulatory, commercial, and operational requirements. From how collateral is held to whether the agreement references an existing International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) relationship or operates as a standalone framework, participants can tailor key provisions without rebuilding the agreement from scratch.

"The infrastructure for off-exchange settlement is largely in place," said Nirup Ramalingam, CEO of BridgePort. "The next phase of this market depends on standardizing the legal foundation beneath it, as has happened in every institutional market before. A shared standard lowers the barrier to entry and gives the market room to scale. DAMA will give the industry that foundation."

Built on a shared set of definitions and contractual provisions, DAMA standardizes many of the legal and operational terms that counterparties would otherwise negotiate independently for each new OES relationship. Key areas covered by the framework include:

• Custody. It sets out how collateral is safeguarded and segregated, and whether it is held in trust or pledged under a security interest.
• Settlement. It defines how settlement credit is extended against collateral, how balances are reconciled, and how the settlement cycle operates.
• Operations. It addresses how operational failures are handled, including erroneous transfers, failed settlements, and outages in the balance feed between custodian and venue.
• Default and Termination. It specifies what constitutes a default, including venue insolvency or failure, and how close-out, termination, and the return of collateral proceed.

By creating greater consistency across agreements, DAMA aims to reduce legal overhead and operational uncertainty while improving efficiency throughout the onboarding process.

"Financial markets become more efficient when participants can rely on common standards," said Steve Bartfield, CPO of BridgePort. "The long-term value of standardization extends well beyond faster onboarding. Widely adopted frameworks create incentives for market participants, law firms, and industry organizations to develop shared legal analysis, operational expertise, and market practices that can be leveraged across the ecosystem rather than recreated for every new relationship. We believe digital asset markets will ultimately benefit from the same dynamic, and DAMA is intended to provide a foundation for that evolution."

DAMA is designed to be adopted across the digital asset ecosystem as a common legal foundation for off-exchange settlement relationships. By standardizing the core terms, BridgePort hopes to help reduce onboarding complexity and support the continued growth of institutional digital asset markets. For more information or to request access to DAMA, please visit BridgePort DAMA.

About BridgePort

BridgePort is institutional middleware designed to address the capital inefficiency, credit risk, and fragmented liquidity that currently exist in crypto markets. BridgePort's agnostic infrastructure allows for secure coordination of messages between exchanges, trading firms, and custodians alike. BridgePort serves as the institutional coordination layer for the off-exchange settlement of crypto through credit allocation and post-trade facilitation to better connect the tradfi & crypto ecosystems. BridgePort is built by a team with decades of experience in fixed income trading and building FX trading platforms for the world's largest traditional financial institutions. It is supported by industry leaders like Further Ventures, Virtu, XBTO, Blockchain Founders Fund, DIY Fund, Fun Fair Ventures, and Humla Ventures.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.bridgeportmq.com/ 

Media Contact: [email protected]

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SOURCE BridgePort