From $1B to $25B: What Comes After Tokenization | Bhaji Illuminati, Centrifuge Labs — S2 E1

Ajouté : 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]2 years ago, the total market cap of real world assets was a billion dollars.

[00:00:04]Now we're at over 25 billion.

[00:00:06]>> We're not just these cowboys building crazy DeFi rails.

[00:00:08]>> We're making fundamental improvements that will make this the best T-bill fund that is available either on chain or off chain. A lot of people ask the question around who's the buyer? If a large [music] institutional investor just wants to hold that S&P, they can go directly into the fund and be a shareholder. If [music] a DeFi user wants to short or borrow against them, loop it, then it becomes freely tradable and permissionless across DeFi. [music] And so I think we'll see massive growth in the RWA space cuz it will need to sort of power the yield that is across the DeFi stack.

[00:00:45]Hey everyone, welcome back to the DeFi drip podcast here at the RWA summit in Cannes for ECC week.

[00:00:53]Today we have a very very special guest, the CEO and co-founder of Centrifuge Labs, Baji. Um welcome to the DeFi drip podcast and maybe you want to kick it off, just give a quick intro of I guess who you are and what you are up to.

[00:01:07]Thank you for having me. Thank you for hosting. We are very excited to be here hosting the real world assets summit.

[00:01:13]This is our third time in Europe, so it's incredible to see the evolution of the real world asset industry aligned to the summit. When we had our first in Brussels 2 years ago, the total market cap of real world assets was a billion dollars. Now we're at over 25 billion.

[00:01:30]So, incredible to see that trajectory and we've had the honor as the curator of the event to shape the topics and the agenda based on what's relevant for the space right now, which has evolved quite significantly. So this year is all about what happens after you tokenize the assets. How do you create utility? How do you create liquidity? How do you integrate them into vaults? How do you actually make them usable and grow organic demand in DeFi? So it's great to be able to solve a lot of those challenges and directly beneficial for Centrifuge because we're able to have a call to action to the builders in the room of what infrastructure and what ecosystem we still need in order to start to see scale for the assets that we've brought on chain. Let's maybe talk about what else we're looking at going in the future. Like what is exciting you from a Centrifuge issuance point of view?

[00:02:19]Um what does the next 6 months look at?

[00:02:21]Like when we talking, you know, the summit potentially the D 5 drip uh in in New York. Yeah. What do you What do you want to look back on? What is the success that you see coming forward for the team? Yeah, so I will talk a bit about some of our existing products and then I'll answer your your original question.

[00:02:37]Uh our current products right now, we have JTRS Y which is a T-bill fund. It's at a billion AUM. We have JTRA which is AAA CLOs. That's at a 400 million. Um and then we have Acre X then we have S&P.

[00:02:50]Uh and they're all unique in their own regard and we have them on chain and we want to make improvements for them. So, for the T-bill fund, it's about how are we integrating this uh T-bill fund into all the stablecoin reserves? And what do we need to do there? We need to have instant liquidity. So, we're adding in a 500 million dollar instant redemption facility that will be free cuz we just really want to scale that. And we need to have instant NAV. So, we're making fundamental improvements that will make this the best T-bill fund that is available either on chain or off chain.

[00:03:21]Working closely with our partners like Janus to actually distribute it into their wealth channels.

[00:03:26]>> Things like Acre X, our private credit fund, making that fundamentally better than the off-chain equivalent. So, adding in liquidity facilities that you can have inter-quarter redemptions, adding in utility components so you can loop it on Morpho. So, those structures and processes really drive growth of that product. As we think about what's next, there's two paths for issuance for Centrifuge. So, on the asset management side, we are working with the largest institutional asset managers who have a mandate for tokenization. They want to tokenize their funds, but they don't understand blockchain yet. They don't have the risk team and the security team and the development team in-house to actually build these products themselves. So, they need to rely on us as their advisor and their trusted Yeah.

[00:04:14]counterparty to tokenize, manage, and distribute those funds. So, that's where we are really bringing in these largest blue-chip brand names who want to get into tokenization.

[00:04:25]Um that's a more selective process where we work really closely with them and we are really structuring their strategy.

[00:04:32]But, there's so much demand for tokenization right now across the board and we don't want to say no to folks who want to use our technology. So, our white-label solution scales access to the same core technology that's audited, that's secure, that's multi-chain, that's constantly improving. Um and provides that to any originator who wants to build on Centrifuge. And these are specialized, vertically integrated asset managers who deeply understand a specific category, uh whether that's, you know, private credit origination, emerging markets, whatever that might be. They have that expertise, they know how to underwrite those products, they have access to these assets, and they don't have the technology experience.

[00:05:14]So, what they do is they use Centrifuge as an infrastructure layer, think like the AWS layer, um where they can then get to market faster and scale and grow these products. So, that's where from our standpoint, we're able to provide this issuance layer both for the most the largest, most sophisticated institutional asset managers and these smaller, vertically integrated specialized managers.

[00:05:37]And then I say a lot like, you know, you tokenize an asset, then what? So, then that issuance layer is pretty well identified and understood. That was like two years ago r/ a VA Summit focus. And then the so what is this D5 layers? So then how do we take these assets and how do we integrate them across D5 into every, you know, lending market and consumer app and fintech and neo banking stablecoin and create this connectivity between these great assets both off-chain products brought on chain or on chain products originated on chain.

[00:06:10]So that we can then drive this programmatic distribution of those. So synthetic had really exciting news that came out yesterday DESPXA our you know D5 version of the S&P.

[00:06:20]I'm really excited because I think it's a a great product for you know everyday on chain users to get exposure to the S&P.

[00:06:27]And I think you know a lot of people ask the question around who's the buyer? And I think we always sometimes forget that there's a large market out there that can't access the S&P depending on where they are in the jurisdictional side or maybe who they are, right? Maybe like it's too complicated and I think it's really exciting to have an asset that the retail market can understand. Yeah. That they're aware of and it gets actively discussed but something that they can get exposure to and you know be able to use it across the D5 legos that we have become to love in the ecosystem like you know we're at the D5 drip podcast and really like I think the utility and the ability to be able to use it as collateral borrow against it maybe you want to leverage yourself against it maybe you want to short it you know who and whatever side of the market you're at so I think that's super exciting for us and you know it really open it to a broader market and a broader spectrum of people who you know will need that access or want that access to the product.

[00:07:17]>> One thing I'll add on that is that what's unique about this structure is that it's a digital native ETF. So there's been some other structures some early adopters who are just moving fast to bring that exposure on chain but it's just a they're just buying the ETF and wrapping the ETF and putting it in a a a D5 wrapper that doesn't have investor protections in mind it doesn't have the thought process around the best way to structure it. So how we have it structured is that the um fund is actually managed by Janice Henderson so $500 billion asset manager and each individual asset is purchased at the fund at the asset level so we're not buying an ETF we're recreating the ETF on chain and we're actually using the data feed from S&P directly so we were the first tokenization platform that they licensed that data feed to and that's the future where S&P S&P Dow Jones Indices they want to rebuild the index business on chain and right now that means asset managers are tracking funds based on these indices in the future that means smart contracts that means AI but there's this disintermediation of asset management that's really being pushed forward from S&P directly and we're their early design partner and what that structure and strategy looks like so as we thought about constructing that fund we wanted to actually build it the right way and then that's the base asset that we then make compatible in Dfy so that's another unique way that we've approached it where if a large institutional investor just wants to hold S&P they can go directly into the fund and be a shareholder if a Dfy user wants to short it or borrow against it loop it then it becomes freely tradable and permissionless across Dfy and that dual access point has been a huge unlock for all of this potential utility and more to come with perps and all these other potential avenues as well but the fact that we have S&P in our corner in the rooms building out this strategy and putting their name and their brand behind it is the first ever for the industry what are you excited about in a year?

[00:09:21]I'm excited for seeing the continued growth of these RWA Dfy plays we see Horizon playing out really well but I think there's a lot of interesting aspects with Mofo and Mofo V2 and the stable yield aspect of Mofo Um, allowing RWAs to power like the base yield there because of the attractive rates. Yeah. And the same likewise of like RVV4 with a certain amount of features there, but also having more RWA specific markets that our assets are in and giving access to, you know, indirect access to RWA yields via the the the borrowers or allowing allowing our investors to be able to move into these markets to be able to make it more efficient.

[00:09:59]And then also really excited that there's going to be this layer of fintech that are going to build all these very abstracted blockchain products away from the user that are all going to be using these underlying RWAs or DeFi protocols to generate yields for the users and I think it's where the future is always meant to go that we're sitting, you don't know that your your yield is being generated from a CLO that's sitting on chain. You just know that you're getting the yield pile for your investment. I think that I think we'll see a lot in that space.

[00:10:28]>> risk-adjusted returns. It's not just DeFi yields, there'll be RWAs that are backing that, too. Which I think is the real driver in the RWA ecosystem that we'll see in the next few months. So, we were at 1 billion 2 years ago, 25 billion now. Next RWA summit in New York in September. In September?

[00:10:46]I think we'll see double the TVL. I think we'll see around 50 million at least. And so, I think we'll see massive growth um, in the RWA space cuz it will need to sort of power the yield that is across the DeFi stack. Yeah.

[00:10:57]Very exciting. Very exciting.

[00:10:59]Um, Baji, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been really exciting to actually talk to you in this kind of setting. I know we we talk a lot during, you know, we we work together, funny enough, but um, it's nice to be able to interview like this and excited to see you at the next one.