DeFi Drip Podcast | Tokenized Assets & Onchain Finance

Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, founder and CEO of Cap, argues DeFi yield has been circular from the start. Bitcoin-backed lending, basis trading, inflationary tokens: on his read, the returns come from crypto paying crypto. Cap connects onchain capital to the productive economy through unsecured credit, the largest credit market in the world, and one DeFi has never been able to touch.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Benjamin and Cap CTO Weso break down the three-sided market behind insured private credit, how institutions are borrowing onchain without posting collateral, and how tokenized RWAs can become the next underwriting asset.IN THIS EPISODE 👇Cap's three-sided market: depositors bring dollars, institutions borrow unsecured, underwriters post collateral and pick the borrowerHow regulated asset managers can become distribution channelsWhat's the borrow demand for unsecured credit onchainHow onchain underwriting is faster than a traditional credit committeeWhy retail should never underwrite institutions directlyWhat secures unsecured borrowing, and the role RWAs can playComposability as the hardest concept to explain to traditional financeSTAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.ioBlog → https://centrifuge.io/blogX (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifugeLinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehqNewsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

DeFi lending has always run on crypto-native collateral. Jonathan Han, CEO of Euler Labs, argues that's a structural problem — correlated assets move together in a downturn, creating cascading liquidations. RWAs fix that by providing a critical layer of diversification.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Adam Bawi, Director of BD at Centrifuge, sits down with Jonathan to break down Euler's modular vault architecture, the deSPXA integration, and why building a transparent risk framework for RWA collateral is the most important challenge in DeFi lending right now.IN THIS EPISODE 👇Euler's comeback: from a $200M hack to $4B in depositsModular vs monolithic vault architecture — and why modularity wins for institutionsHow Kraken Earn built on Euler and hit $100M in deposits in monthsdeSPXA live on Euler: the first tokenized licensed S&P 500 as collateralWhy RWAs provide the non-correlated diversification DeFi lending needsLooping strategies for shorter duration RWA assets — what's comingThe next collateral categories: tokenized commodities, gold, and yield-bearing stablecoinsWhy risk frameworks are the most important unsolved problem in RWA lendingSTAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.ioBlog → https://centrifuge.io/blogX (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifugeLinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehqNewsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

Vaults started as a yield product for DeFi users. Jeroen Offerijns, CTO at Centrifuge Labs, and Frederik Gartenmeister, Head of Product at Centrifuge Labs, argue they're becoming the core primitive that enables any financial product — funds, ETFs, securitizations — to run natively onchain.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Mariia Yatsenko, Head of Marketing at Centrifuge Labs, sits down with Jeroen and Frederik to break down institutional vaults: what makes them different from standard DeFi vaults, why asynchronous execution is a feature not a bug, and what the road from tokenization to native onchain origination actually looks like.IN THIS EPISODE 👇Why vaults are becoming the core primitive for onchain finance — not just yield productsWhat "institutional" means in the context of vault infrastructureWhy asynchronous execution is a safeguard, not a limitationOnchain PM: managing one portfolio across multiple chainsAccounting tokens: how Centrifuge solves the settlement phase problemThe three stages of onchain finance: tokenization, onchain asset management, native originationWhat higher risk-adjusted yields look like when RWAs and DeFi assets are combined in one vault LEARN MORE LEARN MOREDive deeper into institutional vaults with Centrifuge's technical series:Centrifuge Expands Its Institutional Vault Stack with the Onchain Portfolio Manager → https://centrifuge.io/blog/onchain-pmThe Evolution of the Onchain Capital Stack → https://centrifuge.io/blog/from-tokenization-to-vaults-onchain-capital-stackBeyond Instant Settlement: The Standard for Asynchronous Vaults → https://centrifuge.io/blog/asynchronous-vaultsThe Programmable Vault Stack: Customize Behavior Without Rewriting the Core → https://centrifuge.io/blog/the-programmable-vault-stackSTAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.io Blog → https://centrifuge.io/blog X (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifuge LinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehq Newsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

Jonathan Casterline, Product Manager for Digital Assets at Van Eck, discusses where the firm goes next in tokenization. Van Eck holds roughly $4 to $5 billion in digital assets, primarily within the ETF space.A year after launching their tokenized Treasury fund, the firm is working out how to move past experimentation and drive the institutional demand that the next generation of onchain products will need.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Graham Nelson, DeFi Product Lead at Centrifuge, sits with Jonathan to discuss the evolution of asset management, the challenges of distribution in a nascent regulatory landscape, and why tokenization's greatest value lies in direct investor engagement.IN THIS EPISODE 👇 Van Eck's move from ETFs into tokenizationLearnings from their first tokenized fund and how the industry evolvesDebunking "cheaper, faster, better": the intermediaries tokenization was supposed to remove are still in the roomThe marketing problem: what you can actually say once a security is onchainStandardization across private funds, wrappers, and custodial modelsThe relevance of direct investor engagementSTAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.ioBlog → https://centrifuge.io/blogX (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifugeLinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehqNewsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

RWAs can be used as collateral onchain. That part is proven. Sebastian Pulido, Director, Institutional & DeFi Business, at Aave Labs, argues the harder problem is what comes next: market structure, liquidation speed, and getting tokenized assets into the hands of investors who will never touch a Web3 wallet.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Graham Nelson, DeFi Product Lead at Centrifuge, sits down with Sebastian to break down how Aave Horizon is evolving, what Aave V4 unlocks for RWAs, and why the DeFi mullet — fintech front end, DeFi rails in the back — is the real distribution model.IN THIS EPISODE 👇What Aave Horizon is and why it was built specifically for tokenized assetsWho is actually buying RWAs onchain today and what they wantThe liquidation problem: why RWA settlement speed creates a unique challenge for DeFi lending marketsAave V4's hub and spoke model and what it means for RWA collateralWhy fintech distribution — not DeFi apps — is the real unlock for institutional adoptionSebastian's bet: 5-10x RWA TVL in the Aave ecosystem within a yearSTAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.ioBlog → https://centrifuge.io/blogX (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifugeLinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehqNewsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

Credit markets are $200 trillion. Crypto-backed loans are $60 billion. Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho, argues DeFi has barely scratched the surface, and the missing piece isn't more crypto collateral, it's fixed-rate, fixed-term obligations.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Graham Nelson, DeFi Product Lead at Centrifuge, sits down with Paul to break down how Morpho is becoming the lending infrastructure layer underneath fintech, exchanges, and now RWA collateral.IN THIS EPISODE 👇 - How Morpho became the backend for the major exchanges' earn products - Why RWAs are the fastest growing segment on Morpho - S&P 500 as collateral: the DeFi Mullet in practice - Why variable rate lending is the biggest blocker for institutional adoption - Morpho V2: fixed-rate, fixed-term markets and what that unlocks for RWAs - Underwriting seven billion people — Paul's long-term vision for Morpho STAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGEWebsite → https://centrifuge.ioBlog → https://centrifuge.io/blogX (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifugeLinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehqNewsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o

The RWA market went from $1B to $25B in two years. Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge Labs, argues the industry is now asking a harder question: not how to tokenize assets, but how to make them actually useful.Recorded live at the RWA Summit in Cannes for Season 2 of DeFi Drip, Graham Nelson, DeFi Product Lead at Centrifuge Labs, sits down with Bhaji to break down what composability means in practice: lending markets, stablecoin reserves, and DeFi protocols running on institutional-grade assets. IN THIS EPISODE 👇Where the RWA market stands today and what comes after tokenizationCentrifuge's two issuance paths: blue chip asset managers vs. whitelabel infrastructuredeSPXA: why recreating the S&P 500 at the asset level is different from wrapping an ETFThe dual access model: institutional fund shareholders and permissionless DeFi users, same assetRWAs powering yield across the DeFi stack — Morpho, Aave Horizon, and what's nextLEARN MORE Centrifuge App → https://app.centrifuge.io deSPXA → https://centrifuge.io/blog/despxa-on-base STAY CONNECTED WITH CENTRIFUGE Website → https://centrifuge.io Blog → https://centrifuge.io/blog X (Twitter) → https://x.com/centrifuge LinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/centrifugehq Telegram → https://t.me/centrifuge_chat Newsletter → https://share.hsforms.com/19j_mbuUsTiyf84HcIsndswnup3o 

Most onchain treasury products in 2024 give you exposure to an intermediary, not the asset itself. Martin Quensel, founder of Anemoy and co-founder of Centrifuge, is building it differently, the token is the fund share, backed directly by T-bills, issued under BVI regulation. In this episode he explains why institutional structure is what separates real adoption from speculation, and why most offerings aren't asking the right questions yet.

EY's 2023 research showed institutional and high-net-worth investors were already planning significant allocations to tokenized assets. Prashant Kher, who led that research, argues the industry was solving the wrong problem — tokenizing assets was never the hard part. Getting them into investors' hands through the right channels was.

Safe secures more onchain assets than almost any other protocol, but Johannes Moormann's argument in this episode isn't about custody, it's about adoption. DeFi already has the conceptual infrastructure to out-compete traditional finance. What it's missing is a way out of the crypto bubble, and account abstraction is one of the tools that gets it there.