DeFi and TradFi are collapsing into one capital-allocation layer, and the biggest venues in finance are folding into a handful of onchain allocators who hold the deepest liquidity like
@SkyEcosystem,
@aave,
@ethena.
Every other structured product will be the foundational layer.
None of them is just a stablecoin or a lending market anymore. They're becoming crypto's wholesale banking layer. Whoever assembles the deepest liquidity, the sharpest allocators, and real distribution into one system wins.
Two ways I see teams building it.
1) modular and decentralized: a central balance sheet issues the liquidity and sets the risk envelope, while specialized, externally-run desks plug in, each with its own mandate and limits, all drawing on the shared book. A universal bank. One balance sheet, many desks.
@SkyEcosystem shipped this first.
@aave is bringing it to the deepest liquidity in DeFi.
2) centralized then converging: one team allocates the whole book itself, then externalizes as it scales.
@ethena.
Sky has run the model for ~18 months. Sky Core issues USDS and owns the risk framework. Sky Agents borrow USDS up to a governance debt ceiling, deploy their own strategy, and compete on risk-adjusted return that funds the Savings Rate.
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@sparkdotfi owns DeFi yield (~$12B).
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@grovedotfinance owns institutional credit (~$2B).
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@OseroHQ own fintech/ institutional plugins
- 4) Onchian Prime Brokerage via Spark Prime
@ArkisXYZ
- Now expanded to other leaders like
@maplefinance,
@Securitize,
@centrifuge,
@daylightenergy,
@USDai_Official,
@RiverFND via
@obexincubator
Each the best in its lane, all on one balance sheet inside one risk envelope. The allocator OS Maker pioneered, $9.2B USDS later.
@aave V4 shipped the same architecture with V4. A Liquidity Hub holds the capital and the accounting. Spokes draw a credit line against it and set their own collateral, risk, and liquidation rules.
- A team launching a spoke inherits Aave's liquidity on day one instead of bootstrapping deposits.
- Think of it as a supranational bank allocating capital to regional facilities.
@StaniKulechov is right that it's powerful. Hub = Core. Spoke = Agent. A credit line is a debt ceiling.
@ethena is the centralized path, mid-pivot. Perps are down to ~11% of USDe's backing; the rest is institutional lending and CLOs.
- It still allocates from the center, but it's already routing USDe into
@sparkdotfi's Liquidity Layer and tranching the yield through
@strata_money on top.
- Centralized today, but looks more like converging on the same hub-and-spoke tomorrow.
Here's what's actually flowing through all of it. Crypto-native yield compressed, so the real spread now comes from real-economy credit, structured and distributed onchain. The biggest names in TradFi credit are already here:
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@JHIAdvisors ($480B) put its ~$27B AAA CLO ETF onchain as JAAA via
@centrifuge. It now sits in both Sky's and Ethena's reserves.
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@apolloglobal ($785B) tokenized its diversified credit fund as ACRED via
@Securitize, with Coinbase Asset Management and Kraken among the buyers.
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@HamiltonLane ($956B) put its senior credit fund onchain via
@Securitize, live across five chains.
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@Figure has originated $20B of private credit, the largest non-bank HELOC lender in the US, now public on Nasdaq.
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@galaxyhq structured a ~$50M onchain CLO with
@grovedotfinance.
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@3janexyz flips the direction: onchain dollars funding US fintech lenders. A $10M warehouse with LendSwift, ~$8.5M of Slope's SMB receivables, and a $50M forward-flow line, all through bankruptcy-remote SPVs. Securitization, rebuilt onchain.
And it's early. As per,
@RWA_xyz, tokenized RWA is ~$31B, onchain private credit at $5.5B, against a $3T TradFi private credit market. The pipe is tiny. The flow just started.
The hub is the bank. The agents are the desks. The inventory those desks now trade is Wall Street's credit.
Sky built the first one. Aave is building it. Ethena is following soon.