Kaiko: digital-asset data, analytics, indices and data-delivery infrastructure

Kaiko’s institutional range serves banks, asset managers, exchanges and other financial firms that need digital-asset observations, valuations, analytics or benchmarks. For a brokerage, the relevant purchase may be a market-data feed, an execution-comparison dataset, portfolio risk calculations or a licensed index. Those are distinct products with different delivery and usage rights.[1]

Best Execution offers a market comparison built from exchange top-of-book data, with the supplier describing one-second streaming updates. Choosing a filtered exchange universe changes the benchmark against which a broker compares fills. A reference bid or ask is not an executable promise from those exchanges, and the product description does not confer a blanket best-execution compliance conclusion.[4]

The portfolio service can deliver calculations through APIs or into on-chain applications. Risk results depend on the portfolio inputs and chosen methodology; the published proposition is valuation and loss estimation. It does not describe an unrestricted agent that trades or rebalances customer assets.[5]

Market-data REST calls use the relevant service host and an X-Api-Key header on every request. The documented REST limit is 6,000 requests per API key per minute; excess requests receive HTTP 429. Applications therefore need request budgeting and retry handling rather than treating a data subscription as unlimited request capacity.[9][10]

Streaming uses gRPC. The published Python quick start requires an active subscription and an API key supplied by the Kaiko team, and includes a separate resubscription example for connection loss. Implementers should incorporate recovery and entitlement handling into their client rather than assuming that opening a stream alone guarantees continuous delivery.[13]

The Bloomberg Data License integration is explicitly a pass-through under the customer’s Bloomberg entitlement. The customer supplies a client ID/secret and allowlists Kaiko’s egress IP. Kaiko says the Canton request exposes these credentials only to the customer and Kaiko as contract parties, rather than writing them to a public/shared ledger. This is the documented design; it does not eliminate the customer’s credential-governance responsibilities.[30]

For the NCFX request-response oracle, the documented prerequisites include the appropriate Canton domain, participant authentication, a pre-existing RequestFactory, consumer/DSO identifiers, an NCFX request payload and Amulet payment fields. Creating the ledger request asks for data. It is not an instruction to execute the referenced FX pair, and the integration has network and payment prerequisites beyond a conventional REST call.[31]

Custom plans depend on the assets/instruments, data type, granularity, live versus historical access and intended use. Financial-product and custom-index licences are separate commercial arrangements. A quote should identify the selected dataset, delivery channel, usage permission and any implementation or connectivity component; the public tiers alone do not settle those boundaries.[18]

The standard data licence uses a one-year initial term and annual renewal, with at least 90 days’ nonrenewal notice. Fees exclude sales taxes. An additional maintenance/connectivity fee is payable, with its amount unspecified publicly. Annual inflation adjustment does not reduce fees for deflation; the schedule/order determines the purchased service and charges.[17]

The index agreement instead allows scheduled fixed and variable charges, including AUM, volume or usage measures. Its annual escalator is the higher of US CPI-U and 2%. Unless the index schedule specifies otherwise, invoices are in euros and payable within 30 days of receipt. The public template’s “XX” AUM rate is a placeholder, not a published tariff. Its initial term is one year, with annual renewal and 90-day nonrenewal notice; individual index schedules may continue independently.[19]

Blockchain Monitoring advertises unlimited wallets and transactions without overage charges or additional user-licence costs. That statement belongs to the monitoring product; the selected package and contract still need to specify what is supplied. It should not be applied to every Kaiko API or index licence.[6]

Former Vinter customers are still being transitioned to Kaiko APIs according to the current migration notice. It promises direct advance communication before a Vinter service is deactivated. A customer should therefore follow the notified migration and mapping for its own subscription rather than infer that all legacy endpoints have already closed.[15]

At data-licence exit, raw-data use stops and destruction is directed in writing, with legal/regulatory retention exceptions. Lawfully created derived data already incorporated into products need not be removed. The index agreement separately requires trading-model references to be removed within 30 days and permits regulatory record retention.[17][19]

The documentation publishes a status-dashboard route and support contact. These are useful operational channels, but the reviewed public documentation does not establish a universal incident-response time or uptime credit. Production coverage, escalation and delivery recovery commitments should be attached to the selected service agreement.[21]

The April 2026 complaint policy concerns benchmark determinations and methodologies. Ordinarily, complaints must be submitted within three months after the determination or decision concerned; proposed methodology changes have their consultation window. Acknowledgement is due within five business days of receipt and the outcome within 60 calendar days of receipt, subject to notified extensions for complexity or additional information. These complaint clocks are separate from a production data-incident SLA.[20]

The standard data licence permits internal business use and limited customer display. Customers must not be able to copy, download or store supplied raw data. Commercial client-facing derived products require consent and additional terms.[17]

ESMA’s 23 September 2026 transition statement lists Kaiko Indices SAS among administrators expected to leave the BMR register on 1 October unless the stated in-scope or opt-in conditions apply. ESMA also says affected out-of-scope benchmarks can continue to be used in the EU. The live register did not yield a usable entity result in this review, so neither current registration nor completed removal is asserted here. A benchmark’s current scope requires entity- and product-specific confirmation.[24]

Kaiko reports SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II attestations and redistribution agreements with data-originating exchanges. These are different forms of assurance: security/control attestations do not confer financial-services permission, and upstream redistribution contracts do not automatically grant every customer downstream commercial rights. The underlying audit report, period and service coverage were not independently examined for this profile.[23]

The privacy notice is version 3, updated June 2026, despite an older version string in its filename. It covers business-contact and service-use information, including API activity, authentication, errors and security logs. Retention is tied to the service and applicable legal obligations rather than one universal deletion period. Those personal-data rules are separate from the raw/derived market-data licence terms.[22]

Founded in 2014, Kaiko has expanded from digital-asset data into analytics, indices and data infrastructure. Its current contact page lists Paris, London, New York and Singapore offices.[1][29]

The order form identifies the billing entity: Challenger Deep SAS, Challenger Deep Inc, Kaiko Pte Ltd or Kaiko Data Ltd. Contracting jurisdiction follows the applicable appendix.[17]

The separate index agreement identifies Kaiko Indices SAS as the owner and administrator of the licensed rates.[19]

The 1 September S&P announcement uses prospective language for parts of the rebranding and platform arrangement. It should be read as the announced product relationship, not proof that every legacy index, contract and entitlement was migrated on that date. Its benchmark-status language also predates the subsequent BMR transition described above.[25]

Operator

Challenger Deep SAS / Challenger Deep Inc / Kaiko Pte Ltd / Kaiko Data Ltd (order-form entity); indices administrator: Kaiko Indices SAS

Service scope

Institutional digital-asset data, valuation/risk analytics, indices and licensed on-chain data delivery.

Customer types

Banks; Asset managers; Exchanges; Financial institutions

Delivery

API; Hosted

Pricing publication

Public and quoted pricing

Platforms

Level 1 / Level 2 Data; Fair Market Value; Best Execution; Portfolio and Risk Management; Blockchain Monitoring; Data On-Ramp

Pricing scope

Published starting data/FMV subscriptions coexist with custom plans and separate index licensing.

Implementation

Dataset-specific API, stream, cloud and warehouse routes; versions, entitlements and legacy migrations require explicit configuration.

Support

API support and a published status route; benchmark complaints have separate procedural clocks.

Permissions and regulatory scope

Current BMR transition requires benchmark/entity confirmation; data, security and redistribution claims are not blanket financial authorisation.

Provider metadata checked 20 Oct 2026Source 1Source 17Source 19Source 29Source 26Source 6Source 7Source 8Source 18Source 3Source 12Source 15Source 21Source 20Source 24Source 28Source 2Source 4Source 5

A 4 September 2026 data update reclassifies particular OKX USD-margined contracts from perpetual-future to future to match the exchange taxonomy. Most instrument codes remain unchanged, but solusd_umswap changes to solusdumswap. Historical S3 paths for the affected instruments move to the future directory. Direct file consumers should update their mappings and paths rather than assume an unchanged symbol means an unchanged storage location.[16]

Raw snapshot amounts may be expressed in base units, quote units or contracts, depending on the market. The timestamp is Unix milliseconds for Kaiko’s snapshot request. A broker comparing recorded depth with executions should preserve both the unit convention and observation clock; converting every amount to a single assumed base-asset quantity would misstate some instruments.[14]

The Data On-Ramp currently describes delivery through Canton, Arbitrum and Stellar, with other networks available by request. The source provider remains the authoritative licensor and controls access. This infrastructure moves licensed information into on-chain workflows; it is a different service from taking a customer’s fiat deposit or executing a digital-asset trade.[7]