Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov believes crypto has a strong opportunity to attract traditional finance players, many of whom are exploring alternative financial technologies after being disappointed by conventional banks.
“Due to poor banking experiences, we’ve seen a significant shift toward fintech, with these applications capturing substantial market share,” Kulechov said during his appearance at EthCC 2025.
He noted that Aave Labs—creator of the decentralized lending and liquidity platform Aave Protocol—and other DeFi initiatives are focused on making these financial tools more accessible through decentralized systems.
“More than 60% of the global population now uses some form of digital wallet,” Kulechov pointed out. “While most aren’t yet onchain, people are already engaging with digital transactions.”
“The next step,” he added, “is figuring out how to transition this momentum into the onchain world.”
Tokenized real-world assets could attract traditional finance players
Kulechov described the tokenization of real-world assets as a “multi-trillion-dollar opportunity” for crypto to connect with traditional finance.
“There’s real estate, government bonds, equities, corporate bonds, and many other asset classes that could be managed far more efficiently on a transparent, programmable ledger,” he said.
Kulechov stated that bringing legacy financial assets onchain could lead to a more efficient system—and even open the door to entirely new types of assets that currently can’t exist due to traditional market inefficiencies.
“DeFi is the only technology capable of enabling this in a truly borderless way,” he added.
DeFi must be “10x better” to achieve mass adoption
Kulechov admitted that decentralized finance still lacks mainstream recognition, noting that many DeFi protocols—including Aave—are “nowhere near” the user numbers seen by popular fintech apps.
For DeFi to reach mass adoption, he emphasized the need for a strong value proposition and real-world problem-solving.
“If we want to compete with traditional finance and make meaningful change, our solutions need to be ten times better,” he said. “That’s the bar.”
He stressed that when introducing traditional assets and legacy financial infrastructure into DeFi, the experience must offer significant improvements—especially in terms of simplicity and accessibility.
TradFi has started to use blockchain
Several financial technology firms have begun integrating blockchain into their operations. Notably, BlackRock launched a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum in March 2024, which has since grown to over $2.8 billion in total value.
In April, the firm also filed to create a new share class for its Treasury Trust fund that would use blockchain to record share ownership on a digital ledger.
Meanwhile, asset manager Libre Capital announced plans in April to tokenize $500 million worth of Telegram debt, making it available to accredited investors and usable as collateral for onchain borrowing.
