Spent the last week calling the largest institutions to get their read on the DeFi situation.
Key takeaways: 1- Institutional interest isn't going away, for a simple reason: distributors aren't going away. Massive AUM, payments, and loans are coming onchain. Every fintech wants to move fully onchain. As an institution, you don't have a choice.
2- That said, they've completely lost trust in pool/hub models. Institutions and distributors want control: over the code, over the risk, over the compliance. With the flexibility to isolate what they want, while plugging into the global network of liquidity that's compatible with them.
The promise of an open financial system is too big to fail: not because of ideology, but because it's going to create an immense amount of value for everybody involved.
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Coinbase launches crypto-backed loans powered by Morpho in its main app!
This is the largest-scale DeFi integration ever, with far-reaching implications for the future of DeFi, Crypto, and the entire financial industry.
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1/ Crypto-backed loans on Coinbase, powered by Morpho.
Borrow USD with Bitcoin collateral, directly within the Coinbase main app.
Feels like a web2 product (no gas/chain/wallet) but with the full power of onchain infrastructure (liquidity, efficiency, collateral guarantees)
2/ Mass consumer meets DeFi
For the first time ever, a large scale consumer app directly integrates a blockchain network to offer financial services. As outlined in @FortuneMagzine a few days ago:
- Fintechs/Exchanges in the front.
- DeFi in the back.
How token incentives can actually slow down DeFi ecosystem growth
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I never read long threads so I’ll be quick:
1/ Too much focus on token design rather than mechanism design. 2/ Incentives conceal actual innovation. 3/ Some mechanisms weirdly rely on incentives. 4/ What can we do about it?
1/
After discussing it with many VCs, a lot of DeFi founders' attention has been on token designs lately (and how to pump a protocol) rather than improving primitives themselves.
Why? Most DeFi users are farmers: incentives make founders feel like they found product market fit.