# Venues

A venue represents an external counterparty, such as a cryptocurrency exchange or broker, that your keys authenticate to. Every key belongs to exactly one venue. The venue's signing scheme determines which key types you can create for it.

## Pre-seeded venues

Eighteen venues are pre-configured at deployment and cover the most common institutional exchanges:

Backpack, Binance, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Bitget, Bullish, Bybit, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Deribit, Gate, Gemini, Hashkey, HTX, Kraken, Kucoin, OKX, Wintermute.

Each pre-seeded venue has the correct signing scheme and encoding settings for that exchange. You do not need to modify them before creating keys.

## Venue attributes

| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Unique identifier displayed throughout the vault |
| Signing scheme | HMAC-SHA256, HMAC-SHA384, HMAC-SHA512, Ed25519, or RSA (RS256) |
| Encoding | Exchange-specific encoding settings for the signing payload |

The signing scheme controls which key types you can create under that venue, and which decoding logic the policy servers use when evaluating signing rules.

## View venues

Navigate to **Venues** in the sidebar (under the SYSTEM section). The page shows a table of all venues with their name, signing scheme, and encoding.

![Venues page listing pre-seeded exchanges with signature scheme and encoding columns](/img/guide/keys/venues.png)
*The Venues list. Each venue defines the signing scheme and encoding the vault uses for that counterparty.*

## Create a custom venue

If your exchange is not pre-seeded, create a custom venue:

1. On the **Venues** page, click **New Venue** (top right).
2. Enter a unique **Name**.
3. Select the **Signing scheme** from the dropdown.
4. Configure any **Encoding** fields required by the exchange.
5. Click **Save**.

Creating and editing venues is governed by the Administrative Policy. You need the `configure_venues` capability.

## Edit or delete a venue

Open the row actions menu for any venue to edit its attributes or delete it. Pre-seeded venues and venues currently in use by one or more keys cannot be deleted.

## Effect on keys and policy

When you create a key, you select its venue. The vault uses the venue's signing scheme to determine how to generate or import the key material. The policy servers use the venue when decoding signing payloads, which enables rules like "deny withdrawals over a threshold from a specific exchange." See [Signing Policy](/guide/signing-policy/understanding) for details.