Onchain Finance: Banks and Fintechs in Action

Speakers

Keynote

• Grégory Raymond - Cofounder & Head of Research, The Big Whale

Panel - "Stablecoins and DeFi: The New Financial Paradigm"

• Guy de Leusse - Deputy COO ODDO BHF
• David Durouchoux -Deputy CEO, Société Générale - FORGE
• Merlin Egalité - Cofounder, Morpho
• Moderation : Raphaël Bloch - Cofounder & CEO, The Big Whale

Institutionalisation of on-chain lending

• DeFi lending is entering a phase of institutional credibility, driven by the search for balance sheet efficiency and new sources of return.
• Banks remain in the exploratory but active phase, with a focus on compliance, risk management and integration into existing frameworks.
• Infrastructures such as Morpho are positioning themselves as modular "financial rails" rather than simple crypto protocols.

DeFi's structural advantage

• The discourse is clearly moving towards an efficiency-driven financial value proposition:
  • better capital allocation
  • native transparency
  • automated money markets
• The optimised peer-to-peer model is seen as more scalable than traditional pooled pools for certain institutional uses.
• However, liquidity and counterparty risk management remains the main point of vigilance for TradFi players.

Stablecoins: key building block of the new paradigm

• Strong consensus: stablecoins are the critical monetary layer for the development of on-chain credit.
• Banks are moving forward cautiously, favouring:
  • regulated issuance
  • full traceability
  • integration with tokenised money markets
• Convergence between bank stablecoins and lending protocols is identified as a major catalyst in the medium term.

Tokenisation & institutional adoption

• Tokenisation is progressing but remains dependent on concrete use cases (collateral, repo, money markets).
• Institutions are above all asking for:
  • regulatory visibility
  • standardisation of infrastructures
  • depth of liquidity
• Europe appears well positioned thanks to its more legible regulatory framework, even if the scale remains inferior to offshore markets.

Conditions for scaling up

Three major prerequisites stand out:

• Complete regulatory clarity
• Robust institutional infrastructure
• Evidence of measurable economic efficiency
  

‍The market is still in the building standards phase, not yet in mass deployment.

Conclusion

On-chain credit has passed a conceptual milestone: the discussion is no longer about the legitimacy of DeFi but about the conditions for its industrialisation by institutions. Regulated stablecoins, modular infrastructures and tangible efficiency gains will be the key determinants of large-scale adoption in the coming years.

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