The Future of Onchain Collateral | Misha Putiatin

Misha Putiatin is co-founder of Symbiotic, which he built after running StateMind, a security audit firm that secured roughly 22 billion dollars of TVL. Symbiotic launched about three years ago to standardize DeFi infrastructure, comparing the pre-standardization state of the industry to pre-Henry Ford car manufacturing where every protocol was unique and risk research could not scale. After helping launch a stablecoin and an on-chain private credit product, Putiatin concluded the financial opportunity was larger than the infrastructure opportunity, and Symbiotic spent the last six to eight months building Core v2 to serve a wider range of applications.

Symbiotic describes itself as a collateral market whose job is to create a framework for capital allocation that is secure and predictable enough for new protocols to adopt. Core v2 is designed so committed collateral remains productive between obligation events, meaning capital is never idle, and a single collateral framework with predetermined rules allows a vault to allocate to multiple DeFi applications via adapters while simultaneously enabling immediate withdrawal for Liquid Lane clients. Core v1 had a mandatory 14-day delay on capital returns even when both lender and creditor agreed to return funds early, because the system interpreted early returns as potential attacks. Core v2 removes that constraint. The first three applications launching on the updated system are CAP, Nexus, and Liquid Lane.

Liquid Lane solves the early-exit problem for long-duration RWAs such as 90-to-180-day instruments by allowing users to redeem before term in exchange for a small discount. Putiatin identifies a chicken-and-egg problem where the usable size of long-duration RWAs is limited by lack of liquidity, and deposit and redemption flow is limited because those assets are not widely used in DeFi. Liquid Lane is working with Redstone, which has its own liquidation framework and will process liquidations through Liquid Lane. The first asset class is launching with Fasanara Global and KPK as creators, with Avat and Garrison Barter also named as additional creators.

Putiatin describes a three-step path for bringing traditional finance into DeFi. The first step is selling liquidity, meaning the ability to make funds available for other uses, borrow on off days, or exit when traditional markets are closed. The second step is 24/7 pricing, potentially by building an oracle on top of secondary markets or perpetuals that price assets while traditional markets are closed. The third step is deeper DeFi integration once liquidity and pricing are established. He identifies three requirements for RWA composability specifically: a safer and more auditable liquidation framework, accurate NAV reporting, and insurance for compliance-sensitive participants. He cites a real case where a NAV repricing in a traditional finance context caused users to face liquidation risk and cascading liquidations, which he argues would be avoidable with Symbiotic's system.

Putiatin argues that except for Treasuries and some speculative assets, the tokenized asset industry has not yet proven it can deliver significant value from bringing assets on chain. He notes that even for tokenized stocks there are three or four completely different methodologies under the hood and that regulatory frameworks for safely reporting NAV have not been established. He argues exotic asset tokenization should wait until a general framework covering NAV reporting and regulation is built for mainstream assets first. Each RWA issuer currently has its own token standard, vault standard, onboarding steps, and KYC procedures, and KYC completed on one platform such as Centrifuge does not carry over to another such as Securitize. He identifies a ZK KYC solution allowing a single transaction to onboard across multiple RWA platforms as a potentially large unlock, but notes existing ZK KYC protocols are primarily used for airdrops rather than high-value RWA use cases and expresses uncertainty about whether ZK-based credit scoring for KYC is even legally permissible. He mentions 3Jane as a protocol exploring ZK for credit scores or KYC.

Core v2 is built so each curator opts into specific assets under conditions they are comfortable with rather than operating as a homogeneous shared pool, and different curators may specialize exclusively in private credit, money market funds, or insurance. Curators have no obligation to buy assets at a predetermined rate and can exit positions. Putiatin stresses that the quality of curators is critical because analyzing RWA risk is not suitable for beginners. His 24-month goal is to create an environment where capital has no incentive to leave the Symbiotic framework while remaining flexible enough not to miss opportunities outside it.

Putiatin pushes back on peers who argue Symbiotic has sold out by engaging with traditional finance, contending that the real compromise would be limiting the protocol to tokenizing off-chain receipts. He frames the broader mission as bringing real-world assets genuinely on chain rather than simply exchanging tickets for something held off chain, arguing that merely replicating off-chain custody falls short of what blockchain can accomplish. He also disputes the framing that self-custody was central to crypto's original mission, arguing that smart contract functionality was always the more important innovation. Symbiotic's stated near-term milestones over the next 12 to 18 months center on populating the Core v2 framework with curators and assets, with most planned announcements still unannounced as of the recording.