Membrane

Membrane Labs Inc. is a technology provider that supplies institutional infrastructure for digital asset credit. Its platform gives lending desks, credit funds, prime brokers, custodians and banks a single operating environment for running digital asset lending programs, covering counterparty discovery, loan and repo booking, collateral and margin monitoring, settlement, reconciliation, treasury operations and reporting. Two main product lines are described: a Credit Discovery Hub for identifying loan and repo opportunities through structured RFQs, bilateral negotiation via Membrane Chat and structured data rooms; and a Credit Management Platform that manages transactions from booking through maturity, replacing spreadsheets and manual workflows.

The platform is organized around modules including a Loan Management System, a Collateral Management Engine, a Risk Analysis Engine, a Treasury Management Module, a Unified Payments Hub, a Settlement Engine, a Reporting Interface and CustodyLink, a proprietary multi-custodian connectivity network. The Loan Management System supports fixed-rate, floating-rate and open-term loan structures, bilateral institutional credit agreements, prime financing programs and multi-entity lending structures, with configurable day-count conventions and compounding rules, continuous interest accrual, automated due and past-due servicing events, and immutable audit history. Collateral is monitored in real time against configurable LTV thresholds, with automatic margin alerts, top-up, substitution and release workflows.

Membrane states it is not a custodian, not a lender, and does not execute, match or intermediate transactions; it does not hold client funds and settlement instructions are queued to the point of signature, with fund movement following each institution's own custody and authorization process. Supported asset classes include cryptocurrencies on major blockchains, stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, tokenized real-world assets and traditional securities, run through common workflows and margin logic. The company also publishes a podcast, BRANESTORM, focused on digital asset credit.

Founding story

Membrane Labs was founded in 2019 by Carson Cook, who holds a PhD in Physics and a Master's in Electrical Engineering and previously worked in McKinsey & Co's fintech/financial services group. Before Membrane he founded the market-making entity Fractal Labs, which struggled with the crypto infrastructure technology Membrane later set out to build, and he also founded the Ethereum-based DeFi liquidity protocol Tokemak.

Business model

Membrane licenses software infrastructure to institutions that operate their own digital asset lending programs. Modules such as the Loan Management System can be deployed standalone or combined with the Collateral Management Engine, Settlement Engine and CustodyLink as part of the full Credit Management Platform, with institutions typically starting from the modules most relevant to their immediate program. The company does not originate loans, take credit risk or act as a custodian.

Traction

Membrane began limited early access in spring 2023 and reported that some of the largest crypto lenders were using the platform to manage and service loan portfolios. It surpassed $10 billion in total loan bookings in July 2025, and states clients have managed over $12 billion in loans through the platform, which monitors an average of over $1 billion in collateral daily. CustodyLink connects to more than 20 custodians and venues. Ledn's CIO John Glover is cited as a client reference for loan portfolio management. In December 2025 the platform serviced what it describes as the first institutional stablecoin-for-stablecoin repo on a public blockchain, between Cor Prime and Solstice under a GMRA with a Digital Asset Annex.

Latest developments

Recent announcements include an integration with Balance, connecting digital asset loan management and collateral workflows for assets custodied at Balance Trust Company (June 2026); a co-hosted lenders and borrowers breakfast with Cor Prime at DAS (March 2026); a second U.S. patent covering settlement infrastructure (February 2026); the appointment of fintech investor and operator Adam E. Gordon as Strategic Advisor to the CEO and executive team (January 2026); and a new Exchange for Physical workflow enabling transfer of spot BTC and ETH for equivalent futures positions on CME Group (announced January 2026).