Ben Lakoff

Entrepreneur | Investor | CFA

@banklessvc

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

Bankless Ventures 🫡

@banklessvc

[David Hoffman @TrustlessState]

✨ Bankless Ventures ✨

@banklessvc - an 30m early-stage VC fund, empowering pioneers to explore the frontier 🌅

Lead by me, Ryan, and @benlakoff!

With guidance from @drakefjustin and @sassal0x too

An announcement, some thoughts, and our strategy:
https://t.co/lW3ahzWpXB

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

….. watching 👀

[Trading Strategy @TradingProtocol]

J.P. Morgan enters the vault curating business.

JPMorgan Chase is the largest/most valuable bank in the world by market cap.

Right out of the bat, JLTXX vault (denominated in USDC) is $700M, making J.P. Morgan the fifth-largest curator, bypassing @TelosConsilium and @upshift_fi.

Vaulted strategy invests in U.S. Treasury bills, bonds and overnight repurchase agreements.

@jpmorgan runs its vaults on its proprietary protocol from its Kinexys blockchain division (formerly known as Onyx). The vault runs on Ethereum and is denominated in USDC. Before, Kinexys was developing permissioned blockchains.

J. P. Morgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, is also known as a major antagonist of stablecoins, DeFi, crypto, and blockchain, and has not missed a chance to bash them. How the tables have turned.

J.P. Morgan's vaults: https://t.co/big5qvhlk5 - check for our technical details on the vault, strategy tearsheet and smart contract information.

Curator ranking: https://t.co/QxwNJe1FkF

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

Link: https://t.co/akWkBvThAv

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

June deal flow digest is up...Carta says venture is recovering. But TVPI climbing ≠ LPs getting paid (DPI)

<20% of 2017/18 funds have hit 1x DPI. These are 8-9 year old funds (not just crypto)

Next 12-18 months: funds that engineer liquidity win the next raise.

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@jakobdiepen @tbpn Congrats!

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@Mortid_X Timing is everything

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

Exciting times.

"Our goal is simple: to make Ethereum the foundational layer for institutional finance."

"We position ETH as a core institutional asset and showcase innovation across the Ethereum ecosystem."

Love to see it.

[Ethereum Institutional @ethereuminsti]

1/ Announcing Ethereum Institutional

An independent non-profit dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, its L2s, applications and overall ecosystem.

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

Ok this is cool

[yearn @yearnfi]

Yearn's risk team released a new tool highlighting dependency risk across different protocols

Quick explainer on how to use this new tool

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

Libra got bodied by regulators in 2019. That idea clearly didn't die, just waited on GENIUS passing.

Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase + 140 partners just ran it back. Free mints, shared reserve yield.

Distribution....

[Open Standard @openstandard]

Introducing Open USD: a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it.

https://t.co/jqgDRs6mKf

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@Infinit_Labs Exciting times gang!

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@hiFramework @FortuneMagazine Congrats!

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@caplabslimited 🔥🔥

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@uselegion @variantfund @BanklessVC 👋

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@0xSDR Sending you love brother. ❤️❤️

[Ethlabs @ethlabs_org]

Announcing Ethlabs: a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum and ETH

Our mission is to make Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy.

The internet became global because shared protocols created a common language between networks. Private systems remained useful, but bounded. Finance is approaching a similar moment. As value, assets, and markets become digital, the world needs shared settlement infrastructure.

Ethereum is uniquely positioned to become that shared base layer, the neutral foundation on which users, institutions, and agents can transact without intermediation.

What we believe:

• We believe credible neutrality matters. Ten years of uptime and the lowest counterparty risk. Ground that cannot be pulled away by any one country, institution, company, or person.

• We believe ETH matters. The most valuable, programmable store of value. A decade of broad distribution, deep liquidity in onchain markets, and maximally trustless asset on Ethereum.

• We believe DeFi matters. Markets, liquidity, credit, exchange, and coordination, open to anyone.

• We believe adoption matters. Principles do not change the world until people benefit from them.

We sit between two worlds: real usage from the builders at the frontier, and the protocol that has to support it. We work with users, applications, wallets, L2s, infrastructure teams, institutions, ETH holders, core devs and researchers, then turn what they actually need into protocol work, shared standards, infrastructure, and shipped products.

Ethlabs is independent but Ethereum is a shared project. We are one node in a much larger network of stewards. This is the multi-node future.

We have spent the better part of the past decade contributing to Ethereum core research and development.

We are opinionated and transparent. We move with urgency, learn in public, and course-correct when we’re wrong.

We are building a lean, talent-dense team for people who want to do the most important work of their careers: [email protected]

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@jaibhavnani Interesting idea.... There's some other options out there for the liquidity / duration mismatch... I know fission (funds), @multiliquid_xyz, and grove https://t.co/6rikMaRPi8

[Hasu⚡️🤖 @hasufl]

Grove Labs just announced their first product, Basin, an instant redemption facility for RWAs.

Grove Labs is a subsidiary of @SteakhouseFi that operates as a Prime Agent in the Sky ecosystem (formerly known as Stars).

Basin compresses the settlement latency (often T+1 - T+3) associated with RWAs by providing instant stablecoin liquidity, starting with T-bills. Under the hood, Sky gives the RWA tokenholder stablecoin liquidity now, while the off-chain redemption process plays out in the background.

Short-term financing for RWA redemptions is a huge opportunity for Grove and Sky, and a game changer for RWA issuers and their customers, and thus for Defi in general.

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@0xZergs @RWAting_ super cool

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

High APY DeFi vaults w/ illiquid RWAs and private credit look attractive......until panic hits.

RWAs and proof of reserves are great, but they don’t solve the core issue.... these assets can’t be unwound overnight.

A liquid token wrapper on a very illiquid underlying collateral doesn’t eliminate maturity and liquidity mismatch risk.

High yield comes with strings attached. Keep that in mind as more RWAs come onchain...

[Ranveer @ranveerar89]

Dear Users,

Over the past 24 hours, we have experienced an unprecedented level of withdrawal requests and have successfully processed more than 8.5 million USDT in instant redemptions.

Given the sustained withdrawal demand and current market sentiment, we have made the difficult decision to begin an orderly wind-down of the Altura vault. Our priority remains the protection of user capital and ensuring all redemptions are completed in a fair, transparent, and efficient manner.

To facilitate this process, we have notified all counterparties and partners of our decision and have started unwinding positions across the portfolio. These positions include allocations held on exchanges, private credit opportunities, and real-world asset strategies. While some positions can be redeemed immediately, others require standard settlement and redemption periods, and we are working closely with all counterparties to accelerate the process wherever possible.

We want to reassure all users that the wind-down is being conducted in a structured manner and that capital is being returned as underlying positions are redeemed.

Despite it being a weekend, our team has worked around the clock to process withdrawal requests and maintain continuous communication with partners and users. I am incredibly proud of the effort and commitment demonstrated by everyone involved during this period.

Personally, I am deeply disappointed by how quickly misinformation and speculation can spread within the industry. Altura has always operated with transparency and integrity, and it is unfortunate to see unfounded narratives contribute to market fear and withdrawal pressure.

Nevertheless, our focus remains unchanged: executing an orderly wind-down and returning capital to users as efficiently as possible.
We will continue providing regular updates as redemptions progress and additional liquidity becomes available.

Thank you for your trust and support throughout this process.

Ranveer Arora

CEO, Altura

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@Levi_Researcher @DefiLlama has a bit of that but not completely there

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@CupOJoseph exactly

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@Zedzies anyone doing this at scale?

[Ben Lakoff @benlakoff]

@RWAting_ in general they should just stop promising instant liquidity on illiquid assets....

redemption gates make sense (and need to be clearly defined / shown to users)