The inflection point for institutional DeFi

Rayls will bring net new institutions, liquidity and users from across the world onto blockchain rails.

However, each institution is at a different maturity stage in their blockchain journey, with the vast majority still at the experimentation phase or earlier. While a few financial institutions are already in production and scaling, most have remained in the research and experimentation stages due to regulatory uncertainty, perceived lack of technological readiness and clarity on the business case for blockchain use cases.

Times are changing.

Recent market developments are stimulating a significant increase in institutional demand and adoption in the short to medium term:

• Regulation is becoming clearer: GENIUS and CLARITY Acts in the US (July 2025), MiCA in the EU (Dec 2024), VARA Virtual Assets Regulations in the UAE (Mar 2022).
• Stablecoins have found product-market fit: current market cap of $275B, with Citi forecasting growth of 65% annually to reach $3.7T by 2030, showing use at global scale and in production.
• Major institutions acquiring stablecoin platforms: including Stripe’s $1.1B for Bridge (Feb '25), Ripple’s $200M for Rail (Aug '25), Anchorage’s acquisition of Mountain Protocol (May '25).
• Institutional crypto exposure via TradFi products: Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs (since Jan & July 2024) give traditional investors access to crypto market exposure via trusted asset managers such as BlackRock, Greyscale and Fidelity.
• Tokenised yield-bearing assets are next: While earlier in the cycle, yield-bearing assets (excluding stablecoins) have a market cap of $24B today, with McKinsey estimating growth of 176% annually to reach $4T by 2030 (bigger than stablecoins).

With these changes the risk/reward ratio is flipping, bringing value to early adopters and catalysing adoption by the rest of the financial markets for fear of missing out.

Institutions are moving fast to bring value onchain, but this new ecosystem presents challenges to all but the most crypto-savvy institutions. The majority of institutions do not have big blockchain teams, scaled tokenisation experience nor expertise in public DeFi.

Facilitating adoption

Therefore, to remove barriers to adoption and accelerate time to value, Rayls is working to provide the following:

1. The most institutionally suitable public chain - fast, cheap, scalable, secure and compliant
2. An open-source version of the Rayls Privacy Node for institutional-grade token operations
3. Identity credential tools that enable institutions to bulk issue and manage KYC/KYB credentials for all their tens of millions of customers (a requirement to transact on Rayls Public Chain)
4. A pre-vetted group of preferred DeFi service providers (e.g. tokenisation, on/off ramps, swaps, lending, bridges) to expedite institutional vendor selection processes
5. A knowledgable and engaged community of crypto users and investors, ready to trade with institutions and trade tokenised institutional assets
6. Private transactions between institutions using Rayls Enygma and the Rayls Privacy Nodes, both on the Rayls Public Chain and Private Networks
7. Tokenised financial asset distribution to crypto users that meet suitability criteria across other public blockchains - optimising an institution’s global reach across DeFi while still satisfying compliance requirements

Rayls priority use cases and credentials

Rayls' unique value is in connecting private TradFi chains with public DeFi chains, while satisfying the operational and compliance requirements of institutions. This enables institutions to privately issue and exchange financial assets and then distribute them globally across public DeFi networks.

Considering market trends and Rayls' unique capabilities, our initial efforts will initially focus on the following use cases:

‍

1. Private tokenised yield-bearing financial asset distribution

Purpose: Enable banks and asset issuers to tokenise and distribute private, yield-bearing assets (e.g. credit receivables, loans) in a compliant, auditable manner - bridging from institutional private networks to DeFi and across secondary public chain markets.

Value propositions: Issuer distribution to new global investors; DeFi investor access to high yield financial assets from trustworthy issuers; automates compliance for distribution; programmable cashflows (interest, maturity).

Ideal customer profiles: Sellers - Private credit / debt issuers; Buyers - global institutional, accredited or retail investors.

Rayls differentiators: institutional adoption and asset issuance, Rayls Privacy Nodes for private-public chain interoperability, the most compliant public chain.

Rayls credentials: Rayls is in production with Núclea, the largest payment processor in the Southern Hemisphere, to issue, register and distribute credit receivables, with over 10k assets being issued each week and growing.

‍

2. Private inter-bank CBDC and tokenised deposit settlement

Purpose: Allows central and commercial banks to settle wholesale payments using digital currencies within fully private and auditable Private Networks, with optional public chain settlement proofs to enable DeFi users to validate the correctness of private bank transactions.

Value propositions: Real time settlement finality of CBDCs and tokenised deposits; programmable payments and workflows; enforces governance, audit and compliance; private tokens used as collateral for public chain asset issuance and distribution.

Ideal customer profiles: Central banks and commercial banks.

Rayls differentiators: Rayls Private Networks institutional infrastructure, bringing end to end transaction privacy (payments and DvP) with Rayls Enygma), programmable governance and an Auditor View for selective disclosures to regulators.

Rayls credentials: Rayls has been selected for the Central Bank of Brazil's “Drex” wholesale CBDC program, with Rayls already installed within 16 of the largest banks in Brazil, aiming to be in production in 2026.

‍

3. Cross-border payments using tokenised deposits and stablecoins

Purpose: Facilitate instant, privacy-preserving, and compliant cross-border global payments between institutions. Leverages tokenised deposits within Rayls Privacy Nodes with FX into stablecoins (e.g. USDC) for international transfer across Rayls Public Chain.

Value propositions: Real time settlement; compliant cross-border transfer of TradFi value via DeFi rails (supports KYC / AML / CFT checks); tokenised deposits integrated with traditional banking and RTGS systems; removes need for SWIFT, correspondent banking, or central bank reserves; programmable, data rich private-public transaction workflows.

Ideal customer profiles: Global commercial banks; Neo-banks or fintechs with multi-currency needs; Payment service providers (PSPs).

Rayls differentiators: Compliant asset flows between private and public chains using Rayls Privacy Node; the most compliant public chain; multi-chain programmability; transaction privacy with Rayls Enygma.

Rayls credentials: Rayls (Parfin) engaged with Mastercard for the Start Path Blockchain and Digital Assets program, showing a near-real time cross-border tokenised deposit and stablecoin settlement.

‍

4. Private onchain payments and asset swaps (DvP)

Purpose: Confidential, auditable payments and DvP exchanges between institutions' Privacy Nodes leveraging quantum-secure Enygma protocol with selective disclosures for regulatory access. Enygma can be used within Rayls Private Networks or Rayls Public Chain.

Value propositions: Private, EVM compatible onchain transactions (anonymous and confidential); multi-party, near real time payment and DvP settlement; compliant, supporting with KYC/AML and selective disclosures for counterparties' regulators; quantum-resistant cryptography.

Ideal customer profiles: Regulated financial institutions; PSPs and fintechs with privacy mandates

Rayls differentiators: Rayls Enygma supports fully EVM compatible private transactions, both payments of fungible currency tokens and DvP trades with non-fungible asset tokens; Auditor View with precise selective disclosures; programmable workflows with governance rules.

Rayls credentials: Rayls was selected by JP Morgan for their Kinexys Digital Assets' Project EPIC, showcasing Rayls as the best solution (see page 33) for enterprise privacy, compliant identity and composability.

‍

Packaged solutions with partners

To galvanise the convergence of traditional financial institutions with DeFi, Rayls will collaborate with leading DeFi partners to create packaged use case offerings and accelerate the time to value for ecosystem participants.

Beyond the core infrastructure, Rayls will partner with dApp and protocol providers that will provide institutional tools and services across areas such as custody, tokenisation, swaps, lending markets, bridges, KYC/KYB, risk monitoring, crypto accounting, data verifiability and reporting.

By removing barriers to adoption and simplifying the value case, Rayls will accelerate institutional adoption, bringing billions of dollars in net new liquidity and hundreds of millions of users from traditional financial markets onchain.

For our community of DeFi builders, investors and users, this will result in access to higher yield investments, more seamless TradFi-DeFi workflows, lower risk transactions and greater token utility.

‍

Token utility, you say?

In my next post, I will share a simple explainer of the Rayls tokenomics - describing the design choices that will lead to a thriving and sustainable Rayls token economy powered by $RLS.

‍