Defi more exciting than markets realize

Speaking to Crypto.news, Curve founder Michael Egorov argued that the defi ecosystem still holds the greatest value proposition compared to speculative trends like memecoins.

During the 2021 summit, sometimes referred to as the crypto summer, decentralized finance took over. Defi tokens reached all-time highs and the narrative revolved around the so-called “future of finance” thesis.

Fast forward to this year’s cycle, memecoins have taken center stage, accumulating billions of dollars in market cap across a few tokens. The hyper-speculative industry has turned users into overnight millionaires and rich, and sometimes burned investors.

These rumors have fueled talk that memecoins represent a significant crypto use case as a preferred path to participation for retail money over defi. Egorov countered with a different approach, saying defi deserves more attention than it gets.

“I absolutely disagree that innovation is not happening in Defi. It is happening! The market does not recognize it enough. Take Pendle, which deals with interest rate markets, or Ethena, a stablecoin that leverages shorts and Ethereum staking — both are excellent examples of ongoing innovation,” Egorov told crypto.news.

RWAs in Defi chains

Defi ecosystems are cited as primary hubs for improving existing financial instruments, particularly Ethereum (ETH), bonds, stocks, shares, and real estate.

The concept, known as tokenizing real-world assets, has a $7.3 billion market. Experts predict that the RWA crypto industry could reach $16 trillion by 2030 and $30 trillion by 2034.

Ethereum and the larger web3 economy could potentially operate a fully tokenized RWA ecosystem, Egorov said, but regulatory and compliance requirements have hindered progress thus far, according to Curve’s founder.

Egorov noted that the situation could be greatly improved if RWA tokens were created only on-chain and not arbitraged with real markets.

“This will likely enable these RWAs to be used in more permissionless products, expanding their integration within the DeFi ecosystem,” the Curve founder added.

TradFi is in a miserable state:

Standard Chartered expects the RWA tokenization market to reach $30 trillion by 2034.

Today, just $13.2 billion worth of RWA has been tokenized, representing an insane 227,279% growth over the next decade.

In comparison, the total value of the cryptocurrency market is $2.5 trillion.

Private credit is the largest… picture.twitter.com/sHSrjcUebW

— Ignas | DeFi (@DefiIgnas) July 26, 2024

Solving Web2 vulnerabilities and the TON opportunity

Egorov also said in an exclusive interview with crypto.news that decentralized technology solves web2 vulnerabilities and that the industry should move towards more on-chain solutions for hosting services.

The comments came in response to compromised domains stemming from the Squarespace registrar issue. Protocols like Celer Network and Compound Finance were affected, with around a dozen other platforms listed as possible targets.

“The real deal breaker would be native support of ENS and similar decentralized DNS services by major browsers. And yes, decentralized hosting would be a very nice addition. That would eliminate many of the web2 issues,” Egorov argued while speaking to crypto.news.

Moving on to Telegram and its growing status as a crypto powerhouse thanks to The Open Network, Egorov noted that TON has unlocked a new set of users who are currently experimenting with defi implementation. Despite the difficulty of building dapps on TON, the Curve founder said that the blockchain presents an opportunity for native defi development and Ethereum Virtual Machine Support.

“I think DeFi applications have a very high chance of gaining momentum once they are fully launched in the TON ecosystem (which I hear could happen very soon),” Egorov said.

Tap-to-earn mini-games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat have already attracted millions of daily users, active wallets, and airdrop hunters to the TON ecosystem.

Egorov refused to answer questions about the infamous CRV loan and its eventual liquidation.