Guests:

- Eric Chen, Co-founder of Injective

- Mounir Benchemled, Founder of Paraswap

- Thanh Le, Founder of Coin98 Wallet

Top 5 Key Takeaways:

1. The value proposition of DeFi is only being appreciated now

The first key takeaway was mentioned when asked about the challenges seen in DeFi today. Though numerous projects within the crypto space create robust solutions, DeFi was underappreciated until the fall of FTX. Users understood that the convenience of centralization could have severe consequences. Injective, Paraswap, and Coin98 have committed to decentralization.

2. Traditional financial institutions are looking to DeFi to solve their challenges

Before November 2022, many institutions showed interest in crypto. FinTechs and banks were conversing with CeFi projects to see how they could trade. The fall of FTX led to a rise in DeFi. Institutions started to come towards DeFi builders to understand their protocols and build with them.

Mounir, Thanh, and Albert all agreed that what institutions are looking for are twofold:

- Counterparty risk that is suppressed while using DeFi

- Instant settlement components - which is an upgrade of what already exists in TradeFi

3. The DeFi ecosystem needs more builders focused on network obstruction

The conversation flows back to the seamless onboarding and UX of DeFi applications. Especially when it comes to a complex topic like DeFi and crypto, everything needs to be built to increase the attainability for real-world users to gain more market share. A dApp should be so simple to understand that even if one doesn’t know anything about DeFi, derivatives, or leverage, one should still be able to use the dApp.

4. User experience must be simplified before we consider onboarding the next millions of users

Although some projects are pushing the limits and have seen immense growth in the DeFi space over the past years, onboarding is still challenging. A topic such as wallet management is still very “heavy” for people to understand, and that is perhaps why DeFi doesn’t have millions of users yet. Similarly, it’s not just the users who need to gain a simplified understanding and suite of tools, but developers too.

5 There is an opportunity for banks who want to do business with “us” (crypto)

To round off the conversation, we asked our guests what the future of banks will look like and what needs to happen for more crypto adoption from the traditional financial sector. Scott starts the conversation and says we already see the early signs of adoption from trad-fi. In the past years, there has been a crisis of confidence in the crypto space, but now we are seeing that shift in this crisis towards the banking system. This phenomenon opens up people's eyes as they realize banks are not where everything is safe. However, this doesn't mean that banks are going anywhere. Banks will always be around, but they need to start thinking about how they will adopt digital assets like Bitcoin and how they could help in their reserve; this will shift how banks operate.

The conversation continued with the argument that we don't need too many on and off-ramps. For example, crypto makes up a significant amount of money globally, and there is a demand for these services. And there should be few problems getting banks and crypto companies to work together. There is ample opportunity for banks to work with Bitcoin, and if you have a distressed bank, why not work with cryptocurrency companies?

The Spaces closes with a statement from Falvian, as he says it also depends on the regulators and the trust of the traditional institutions. Now is the time for the crypto industry to build trust and learn from our past mistakes. Banks will then see the value of working with crypto companies, and naturally, demand will increase.