---
title: "Why Blockdaemon Chose Zuplo to Connect AI Agents to Financial Tools"
description: "Blockdaemon connects AI agents to financial tools with Zuplo MCP Gateway, using authentication, tool access controls, rate limits, and logs of every call."
canonicalUrl: "https://zuplo.com/blog/2026/09/22/why-blockdaemon-chose-zuplo-mcp-gateway"
pageType: "blog"
date: "2026-09-22"
authors: "nate"
tags: "Customer Stories, Model Context Protocol"
image: "https://zuplo.com/og?text=Why%20Blockdaemon%20Chose%20Zuplo%20MCP%20Gateway"
---
Blockdaemon wanted to bring its financial APIs to AI assistants quickly, with
security and observability in place from launch. Building and maintaining
authentication, access controls, rate limits, and logging would have taken time
away from its financial tools.

It chose the [Zuplo MCP Gateway](/mcp-gateway) to handle those controls. Its
engineers could focus on the MCP server's tools while using Zuplo to manage
access and see what happened on each call.

Those tools cover decentralized finance, or DeFi: financial services built on
blockchain networks. They let agents compare prices for exchanging tokens,
inspect lending positions, and check rewards earned by staking tokens to help
secure a network.

In
[Blockdaemon's announcement](https://www.blockdaemon.com/blog/how-blockdaemon-and-zuplo-deliver-governed-defi-access-for-ai-agents-2),
Varun Gyanchandani, Director of Engineering, explains why those controls
mattered:

> Our customers adopt what they can audit, so agent access had to ship with
> authentication, curation, and logging enforced at the gateway from the first
> request.

## How Blockdaemon uses Zuplo MCP Gateway

Blockdaemon's DeFi MCP Server makes more than 180 financial tools available to
AI assistants, including Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, and Codex. Agents can
search for the tool they need, whether that's checking a lending position or
comparing token exchange prices.

The Zuplo MCP Gateway sits in front of that server:

![AI clients reach Blockdaemon's DeFi MCP Server and API through the Zuplo MCP Gateway.](/blog-images/2026-09-22-why-blockdaemon-chose-zuplo-mcp-gateway/diagram-1.png)

Blockdaemon builds and maintains the financial tools. Requests from AI clients
pass through Zuplo before reaching those tools, so Blockdaemon can apply access
rules and record activity at the gateway.

That gives Blockdaemon four controls it needs to run the service:

- **Authentication.** Zuplo checks who is connecting before a request reaches
  Blockdaemon's MCP server.
- **Tool access.** Blockdaemon chooses which tools to expose. It can offer
  different sets of tools without rebuilding the financial tools themselves.
- **Audit logs.** Structured tool-call logs give Blockdaemon a record of what
  was called and who called it. Zuplo's [Audit Logs](/docs/articles/audit-logs)
  can also store request events for review in the portal or through the API.
- **Traffic controls.** Rate limits help Blockdaemon control how often agents
  call its tools. The gateway also screens MCP traffic for prompt injection.

## Less infrastructure to build and maintain

Putting these controls in the gateway lets Blockdaemon change access policies
without rewriting its financial tools. When its engineers add a tool, they don't
have to build another authentication flow or logging system around it.

That leaves Blockdaemon's engineers more time to develop financial tools for the
more than 30 blockchain networks it supports. They can ship new tools with
confidence that they can control access and review how agents use them. Zuplo
MCP Gateway can sit in front of an MCP server on its own, with no API migration
required.

Read the [Blockdaemon customer story](/customers/blockdaemon) for more on its
work with Zuplo. To see how to apply the same controls to your MCP server, start
with the [MCP Gateway documentation](/docs/mcp-gateway/overview).