Some product development challenges can’t be handled by following the standard outsourcing playbook. Opening an offshore development center became a pinnacle of engineering initiatives for *instinctools’ another client, a trailblazer among European cryptocurrency exchanges in 2010s. The necessity to meet ironclad KYC/AML procedures and security requirements set by regulators and banking partners as well as safeguard their intellectual property served as a woke for the client to think beyond other collaboration models. For more than five years, the center has been a unified hub of operational excellence, taking over all the core competencies, including engineering, product management, partner sales, and customer support.