ARK Invest Refutes a16z’s View: Traditional Finance May Rely on DeFi Infrastructure, Not Permissioned Blockchains

Odaily Planet Daily News ARK Invest’s Head of Research, Lorenzo Valente, recently publicly refuted a16z Crypto’s assertion that “traditional finance needs blockchain, not DeFi,” arguing that financial institutions are more likely to be built on open DeFi infrastructure in the future. Public blockchains have already demonstrated their advantages over private blockchain solutions. The growth of tokenized assets on open networks like Ethereum highlights the stronger network effects and scalability potential of public blockchains.

Lorenzo Valente pointed out that the builders of the next generation of financial infrastructure may not be traditional financial institutions, but rather crypto-native enterprises, such as Circle and Coinbase.

Earlier, a16z Crypto presented a differing view, suggesting that traditional financial institutions are not truly embracing DeFi, but are selectively adopting blockchain technologies that meet their existing compliance, governance, and operational requirements. Banks and asset management firms will build “programmable financial infrastructure” in the future, leveraging core capabilities of blockchain like tokenization and atomic settlement, but while maintaining permissioned management and institutional control.

Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also raised objections to a16z’s stance. He argued that financial institutions might eventually adopt the underlying DeFi infrastructure and layer compliance, custody, and enterprise-grade control mechanisms on top of it.

With the rapid development of RWA tokenization, on-chain settlement, and institutional-grade financial applications, the debate over the future dominance of “open DeFi architecture” versus “permissioned blockchain systems” is intensifying. (Cointelegraph)