SebVentures

interest rate scholar
Founding Chef at @SteakhouseFi
Too boring for #DeFi, too punk for #TradFi

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

1/ Introducing the Crypto Banking System, a roadmap to bring DeFi to be a challenger to TradFi
https://t.co/n8RMXMos0d

[Digital Asset Summit 2026 @blockworksDAS]

Sébastien Derivaux contrasts traditional fund control with curators' allocation rights constrained by cryptographic guarantees.
"not by social contract like an asset manager"
@SebVentures @SteakhouseFi

[Romi @rom9nka]

A little something we’ve been cooking up at @SteakhouseFi! 🥩👩‍🍳

Great to be at @blockstories Horizon 2026 in London with the team, where @adcv_ led a fantastic workshop on onchain vaults and institutional yield.

Read more about onchain vaults here
https://t.co/ABb6sC2uCz

[Steakhouse Financial @SteakhouseFi]

Understanding Onchain Vaults

With around $11.5B in assets supplied, vaults are one of the few blockchain innovations to reach the mainstream, now offered by major fintechs that have onboarded 100K+ users.

How vaults work and where they’re heading: https://t.co/VVf08NkksX

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@DarkosNightmare @ethereum It's LLM as pointed out. Which matches broadly what i hear from the street (not that I agree with).

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

It is correct that people like decentralization of @ethereum . But I don't hear it as a significant reason to pick Ethereum over competitors.
You can make a great product or a product that changes the world. 99% of the work here is positioning. Product can stays the same.
Just drop CROPS and say
CLEAR: Control, Liquidity, Efficiency, Assurance, Resilience.
The LLM chart below is quite imperfect but still a valid data point.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

3. Optimizing for ETH as SoV is aligned with decentralization and CROPS

Whenever I ask what people appreciate the most about Ethereum (as opposed to either other blockchains, or anything outside the blockchain world), the most common answer is: decentralization and CROPS (censorship and capture resistance, open source, privacy and security).

Decentralization and CROPS have a lot of value, even to institutions. For individuals, privacy is often viewed as an abstract ideology. For institutions, it's prudent risk management, data protection law compliance, and a number of other things. Likewise for security. And likewise for running your own node (enterprise buzzword: "on-prem deployment").

But what about for the ETH holder? Well, it depends why you're an ETH holder. If you want ETH to optimally chase financial trends and collect fees from them, then you want a Fearless Leader™ who bravely shouts on the socials that Ethereum loves [insert opportunity here] and will pragmatically reconfigure itself to give it explicit protocol support.

But if your primary reason to hold ETH is as an SoV, then you will be judging ETH by SoV-ish metrics. And what is the first and most important SoV-ish metric?

To survive.

That's what a big chunk of this last Devcon was about ("post-quantum and post-AI"). You want a chain that is taking conservative tradeoffs ("hash-only security, all formally proven, >3x more rounds than known to be necessary for security"). You want a chain that is aiming for at least partial ossification, where the great balance of work will move to higher levels of the stack once the core is complete. You want a chain that aims to minimize protocol politics, by having a very high bar before it accepts either precompiles that bloat the protocol or new kinds of in-protocol rewards that could get captured.

What other SoV'ish metrics?

The ability to easily hold it safely (hence, work on multisigs).
The ability to hold it privately (hence, kohaku work).
The ability to hold it privately *and* safely (hence, 8288 and private-AA workstreams already starting).
The guarantee that if you have coins, you can send them, and block builders can't stop you (FOCIL)
Minimized infrastructure dependence (basically the whole decentralization roadmap, including the fact that I am able to currently run a node on this laptop, and it synced in < 6 hours and takes up only 1/8 of my hard drive - better stats than in 2019!)

Now, are there "adoption" goals that are highly synergistic with SoV?

Very much so.

The more assets there are natively issued on L1, including both RWAs and native decentralized assets, the larger a set of things you can "do" with your ETH, the better. Being able to easily (including safely, trustlessly) convert back and forth between ETH and other assets, use ETH as collateral to do things with other assets, etc, all forms part of the utility of holding ETH.

There are still some conflicts between serving these use cases and decentralization (eg. we want to be careful about fast slots and impact on centralization), but on the whole much less than what you get if you maximize fees.

Conclusion:

The best social reason to care about Ethereum is because it makes decentralization and CROPS properties a reality for more people and uses.

The best private reason to hold ETH is its SoV properties, which are a direct consequence of that decentralization and CROPS.

[Steakhouse Financial @SteakhouseFi]

Our Chefs are in London for @block_stories, @blockworksDAS, the @ethereuminsti Forum, @stable_summit and Capital Summit 🇬🇧

We hope to see you there.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@wolfgangg37 @defi_mago @base @Morpho @PaulFrambot @0xMiracle_ by construction if more supply it will cool off.
@base should keep slightly high rates due to market structure. But not much higher like in the past.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

ETH monetary policy was changed but always to be reduced.
People holding ETH, like home owners have an incentive to create more scarcity.
Greed is good.
But i would agree that it's harder to sell than BTC having a problem but only after everyone currently alive is dead.

[Dan Held @danheld]

@lex_node Wild that you think a protocol with a constantly changing monetary policy (just like fiat) can be a “sound money”

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@danheld @grok @lex_node @cautionfun_ It changed the future not the past so not a rollback. But fine to say it was a rollback.
Bitcoin did have 2 rollback.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@flipdazed @ethereum JPM launched JPMD on @base first.
I'm not saying it doesn't matters. I'm saying you are not gonna sell anything with just that.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@supersmooth_fi @ethereum Decentralization matters and it's not about asking anyone to change anything but the marketing narrative.
Just keeping best decentralization vs CROPS would be huge.
Every time i hear CROPS i feel part of a geeky cult not part of something of changing the world.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

Insurgent capitalism: Island, bricolage and the re-making of finance
https://t.co/QCFkrRPOoy

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

"successful innovation is nearly always bricolage: the creative, ad hoc re-use of existing resources (ideas and other cultural resources as well as artefacts)"
Very bullish as you can call crypto "bricolage experts" merging weird ideas and strange cultures.

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

@luigidemeo @aave Clear correlation. Delivering value for @aave .
https://t.co/FD1J8GJziN

[Luigi D'Onorio DeMeo @luigidemeo]

Today we welcome another curator to @aave, @SteakhouseFi.

Steakhouse is curating Ethena Pay’s Earn+ vault, powered by @upshift_fi and @aave on @avax

[Stable Summit 🦫 @stable_summit]

What sits behind a deposit token, a regulated stablecoin and a CBDC, what does that funding support, and where does each fit across settlement, payments and treasury?

Which of the three can carry the currencies that sit at the centre of treasury and settlement flows but hold almost none of the market, and what does a shift between them change for deposit funding and credit creation?

On stage:
@sebventures, @SteakhouseFi
Myles Wright, @fnality
Ryan Hayward, @Barclays

Moderator:
@OttoJacobsson, @YAPGlobalTeam

Secure your spot: https://t.co/wWbpPtVel6

[Baptiste Cota @BaptisteCota]

Surprised that Midas is silent on this whole SEC feedback vault debate Aave, Morpho etc. ?

We issue securities managed by asset managers with licenses. So we are future proof here. Our tech platform is vault-like, but our products are not.

Vaults on-chain come in many shapes or forms. Some are quite obviously issuing securities where the manager has full discretion like a vault operating hedge fund strategies. Others, particularly DeFi lending platforms such as Aave and Morpho, function very differently.

DeFi lending vaults are a different paradigm and the SEC needs to recognize this and regulate accordingly. Hopefully it can stick to its mandate and limit itself to protecting investors rather than limiting innovation and growth.

Let's not forget that DeFi is small. If we want it to grow and want it to succeed and change the world of finance, we need TradFi to use it and for TradFi to use it we need regulatory clarity.

Educating, engaging with regulators, engaging with banks, asset managers, traditional custodians, etc is the path to our collective success

[Steakhouse Financial @SteakhouseFi]

Gold-backed loans are live on @coinbase.

Borrow USDC against tokenized gold from @Paxos (PAXG) in the Coinbase app, through a new PAXG/USDC market on @base.

Powered by @Morpho. Curated by Steakhouse.

[Stable Summit 🦫 @stable_summit]

How do stablecoin capital, lending infrastructure, tokenised assets and consumer distribution now function as one stack rather than separate markets?

What do tokenised real-world assets have to demonstrate before they work as productive collateral rather than held positions, and what does a 24/7 market change for allocation, redemption and risk transfer when no venue closes?

On stage:
David Vatchev, Fasanara Capital
@sebventures, @SteakhouseFi
Andrew Price, @Payward (@krakenfx)
Alexandra Kugusheva, @Morpho Association

Moderator:
Úrsula O’Kuinghttons, Atacama Finance

Secure your spot: https://t.co/wWbpPtVel6

[SebVentures @SebVentures]

What's the difference between
- a vault where a DAO can change params through public, timelocked votes
vs
- a curated vault which same timelock which are onchain?
In both case, the depositor isn't in control but can leave during the timelock.
The core question is the level of control and if there is a threshold where it change the nature of the vault.