A quant research lab for institutional digital assets.

Iqana builds, tests, and runs systematic strategies under academic rigor and institutional governance. Pre-registered theses, walk-forward validation, segregation of duties, hard pre-trade limits. Our research lab and our trading floor are the same team.

Edge thesis

Why systematic works here.

Digital-asset markets have four structural characteristics that systematic methods exploit better than discretionary ones.

24/7 markets

Continuous trading demands continuous decisioning. A 24/7/365 market generates roughly 4× the data points of an 8/5 equities desk — and no traditional team is built to monitor or execute at that pace.

Multi-modal data

The deepest data set of any asset class — price action, on-chain settlement, macro context, and sentiment. Quant models exploit signals discretionary traders can’t read.

On-chain transparency

A signal source no other asset class offers. Exchange in/outflows, stablecoin flows, large-holder wallet behavior, cross-chain capital rotation — directly observable to anyone with the infrastructure to process it at scale.

Structural inefficiency

Liquidity fragmented across global CeFi and DeFi venues. Dominant retail flow. Immature institutional participation. Dislocations exist — capturing them needs discipline, not opinion.

Research & Deployment Process

Five gates and a live trial
on our own book

Every strategy passes five independent gates; ownership changes hands at each one.

T1
Phase 01 · Research & design

Economic prior

Phase 01 · Research & design

Written investment thesis. Defines the edge, invalidating conditions, and pre-committed success criteria — registered before any backtest is run.

T2
Phase 01 · Research & design

Backtest & walk-forward

Phase 01 · Research & design

Held-out data with rolling walk-forward windows. Performance, Sharpe, drawdown and turnover must pass across all OOS windows.

T3
Phase 02 · Validation

Independent review

Phase 02 · Validation

Second quant — not involved in construction — reviews assumptions, data leakage, parameter sensitivity and capacity and portfolio fit.

T4
Phase 03 · Deployment

Firm-capital trial

Phase 03 · Deployment

Runs live on Iqana capital at minimal size, over a minimum evaluation window. Live slippage, fills and signal quality must reconcile to backtest within tolerance.

T5
Phase 03 · Deployment

Graduation

Phase 03 · Deployment

Approved for client allocation only when live-vs-backtest Sharpe is within IC-defined tolerance band, execution quality reconciles and IC reaches majority approval.

Platform architecture

Four integrated layers.
One institutional engine.

Data, model, execution, and monitoring — four integrated layers built with institutional rigor at every gate. Every action is logged, every parameter is enforced, every layer is independently reviewed.

01
Data Layer

Multi-provider · Tick-level · Schema-enforced

Clean, validated, versioned data from multiple independent providers — schema enforced at ingestion, full lineage from raw tick to feature.

Pipeline

IngestionValidationStandardizationNormalizationStorage & VersioningEnrichment & Feature Store
02
Model Layer

Pre-registered priors · Independent review · Five-gate lifecycle

Deterministic, reproducible research — every strategy starts from a written, pre-registered thesis with pre-committed success criteria. No lookahead.

Pipeline

Feature EngineeringBacktesting EngineOptimization Engine
03
Execution Layer

Low-latency · Shadow mode · Kill switches

Low-latency, async execution with verified failover — every order cleared by pre-trade risk controls, position sizing volatility-scaled and regime-aware.

Pipeline

Order GenerationPre-trade RiskSmart RoutingExecution EnginePosition Sizing
04
Monitoring Layer

24/7/365 surveillance · Audit-grade logs

Full observability across P&L, risk, model health and execution quality — threshold and anomaly alerting, every session mirrored to an audit trail.

Pipeline

Real-time P&LRisk DashboardsModel HealthExecution QualityInfrastructure HealthAlerting
Operational infrastructure

Institutional-grade
execution infrastructure

We execute exclusively on tier-1 institutional venues. Every trade is logged, every fill reconciled. Execution always happens on your own accounts — Iqana never takes custody.

Binance
Kraken
OKX
Coinbase
Deribit

Execution on your own accounts · No custody · Full auditability

Custom mandates & next steps

Engineered for your mandate.

Same five gates. Same firm-capital trial. Same monitoring — scoped to your allocation constraints, risk parameters, and benchmarks.

Scoping

Define the mandate.

Investment objectives, risk parameters, and capacity targets defined with your investment and risk teams.

Engineering

Build the strategy.

Bespoke strategy designed and tested on Iqana’s research platform. Same five gates as our flagship strategies.

Validation

Trial on our book.

Independent review, then a firm-capital trial under live conditions before any client allocation.

Deployment

Live on your venues.

Execution on your accounts via trade-only API. Reporting and monitoring tailored to your standards.