DeFi 3.0 panel notes from The Crypto Valley conference
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Conference notes: 1inch has processed 700B in volume (40B in May 2025), UX friction and liquidity fragmentation hold back adoption, and travel rule and AML requirements keep institutions out. Panelists stress incentives, B2B distribution and CeFi-facing infra.
Key claims
1inch has processed 700B in volume, 40B in May 2025 alone
Travel rule and AML make it hard for institutions to tap DeFi because counterparties are unknown
Bitcoin Suisse ran a proof of concept with Liquity where clients took loans directly
TL;DR of „DeFi 3.0: Rethinking Finance in the Age of Utility and Scale“ at @thecryptovalley conference day 2.
Speakers: @marcelharmann, @AaluxxMyth, @OrestGavryliak and @svobodamichael.
- DeFi is currently just a fraction of TradFi, but it keeps growing, at least at @1inch, which has processed 700B in volume and 40B just in May 2025 with active and unique wallet addresses continuously growing. APAC + Middle East are key regions for 1inch says @svobodamichael.
- Because of B2B business there is also a lot of centralized players that integrate @1inch infra and incentivize usage by the ens user.
- @Thorwallet integrated @MAYAfinance and @1inch, providing aggregated best execution across venues to users. A key driver for cross-chain volume on these platforms.
- @Thorwallet is currently seeing growth from existing market, but increasingly also seeing users move over from TradFi services like Revolut.
- The team around @marcelharmann is working on a gasless wallet, providing a fully chain-abstracted UX in order to overcome UX friction that still exist for new, unexperienced users.
- Issues that hold back DeFi adoption: Often its hard for users to understand why a transaction needs time to confirm. They are accustomed to the real-time UX from web2/TradFi, and the concept of finality or the necessity for gas, are often hard to grasp.
- The existence of multiple and an increasing number of chains, is another problem, fragmenting liquidity and causing UX friction.
- As an industry, we need to look at examples from TradFi and Web2 to provide easy to use products with a seamless UX. There are many pain points still though.
- Good analogy: If you go to a restaurant, you want food, not see the kitchen. Eveb if it’s amazing. That‘s where we have to go with the DeFi UX.
- There is a real opportunity for lending protocols to reach global scale. What makes DeFi great, is that it can be easily accessed from everywhere. Especially if coupled with incentives, this gives rise to powerful user acquisition dynamics.
- @BitcoinSuisseAG did a great proof of concept with @LiquityProtocol where clients were depositing collateral and taking out a loan directly from Liquity.
- Problem with travel rule and AML is that it makes it very hard for any institution to tap into DeFi because they don‘t know the counterparty.
- Regulation is a problem and we have to be careful that regulation won‘t protect the legacy system, pushing DeFi into niche. Ultimately we need to bring in the institutions before we onboard the farmer in El Salvador.
- @mayaprotocol as a cross-chain DEX is is highly technical and complex (e.g. need for threshold cryptography across chains). Thats why app layer matters and @Thorwallet is a good example for that.
- Its a challenge to get the product integrated with all B2B partners (e.g. aggregators, wallets, etc) which serve as UI layer tho and get broad distribution.
- Great thing is that we have direct access to retail and there is a lot of appetite. But in DeFi a lot is about incentives but you need a good product too. Good example is @ethena_lab: Tokenized a popular trade, made it accessible and scaled it well.
- Incentives are key for adoption, even Revolut offers them (think of points or onboarding bonuses). Institutions should work more on adoption using DeFi as an infrastructure layer. Builders want to target CeFi users by providing infra solution to the established players.
- Liquidity fragmentation is a problem because we have too many chains. That‘s what @1inch aims to solve.
- DeFi is very modular and all panelists work on key parts of how we can ultimately make DeFi great.
- Similar how the internet allowed information to flow free globablly, DeFi is here to allow value and financial services to be freely available at global scale.
- Internet UX in the 90s was shit too and we‘ve come a far way since then. DeFi is growing equally fast if not even faster and we will solve these UX issues.
And sry for wrong tag on @maya_protocol, not sure what went wrong there.
But great talk by the chads on stage!
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