DeFi In Motion: Inside The Hack Season Conference Panel On The Future Of On-Chain Finance
In Brief
A high-stakes panel at the Hack Seasons Conference in Cannes brought together DeFi leaders for a rare, candid debate on decentralization, infrastructure, and the future of financial systems.
At the Hack Seasons Conference in Cannes, one panel stood out with its rare mix of hard truths, technical clarity, and genuine disagreement.It brought together leaders building across the DeFi spectrum: from stablecoins and aggregators to base-layer chains. These weren’t theoretical discussions. These were builders running live infrastructure, with billions in TVL and tens of thousands of users.
Among the speakers were:
- Francesco Andreoli — Director of DevRel at MetaMask;
- Ash V. Khatibi — Marketing Lead at Sonic;
- Michael Morgen — CEO at SwapKit;
- Lorena — BD Lead & Core Contributor at Lista DAO;
- Mike Silagadze — CEO at Ether.fi.
Each represented a distinctly different thesis about the future of decentralized finance—and the tension between those theses made for a rich, often charged conversation.
From Protocols to Products: DeFi’s Next Layer
Noyona opened with an overview of Nista DAO’s growth, highlighting its decentralized stablecoin and lending protocol recently deployed on BNB Chain. With over $2 billion in assets under management and rapid expansion into permissionless lending, her emphasis was on making DeFi infrastructure usable and intuitive—even for people unfamiliar with blockchain mechanics.
Mike from EtherFi followed with a broader vision: DeFi not just as a better bank, but a full-stack financial system. EtherFi’s ambitions go beyond yield. Their approach to combining crypto-native custody with clean, intuitive UX was echoed in a recurring idea throughout the panel: the tech exists, it just needs to be assembled with care.
Ash from Sonic brought heat. He laid out a pointed critique of Layer 2 ecosystems, calling them extractive, unaligned with the ethos of decentralization, and fundamentally built for profit. Sonic positions itself as a builder-first Layer 1 blockchain offering sub-second finality—enabling the kind of high-frequency trading and limit-order books previously only possible on centralized exchanges. It was a reminder that even inside Web3, there is a war over what decentralization means, and who should control its financial layer.
Michael Mogren, representing SwapKit, focused on simplifying cross-chain liquidity—especially around native Bitcoin. His framing was stark: most DeFi products today are “islands,” each chain requiring its own SDKs, smart contract standards, and developer tooling. SwapKit’s bet is that the first teams to effectively abstract away those differences will onboard not just the next million users, but the next million developers.
Hype Cycles and Hard Problems
The panel quickly moved into what’s hot, what’s real, and what’s noise. Stablecoins are back in focus. New integrations like USD1 and the push by Robinhood and Kraken to tokenize assets have created tailwinds for builders in that space. But as Ash reminded the audience, many of these integrations are surface-level at best—designed to appear Web3-compatible without embracing its principles.
Central limit order books (CLOBs) got attention, especially for their capacity to replicate the smooth experience of centralized exchanges. Until recently, those designs were impossible on-chain due to latency and finality constraints. But platforms like Sonic are now achieving 0.4-second finality, opening a path to true decentralized trading experiences that feel centralized in speed—but not in control.
Agent-based DeFi, powered by AI, was also on the table. But while the vision of self-executing strategies and personalized portfolio agents is exciting, speakers agreed that much of the foundational tooling is still not in place. Before AI can act on behalf of users, it needs robust, standardized, and interoperable smart contract primitives—a challenge still very much underway.
Decentralization, L2s, and the Ethics of Scale
One of the most engaging parts of the discussion revolved around the role of Layer 2s. Ash was unambiguous: he sees L2s as an ethical compromise, where decentralization is sold out for scalability—and profits. Francesco pushed back gently, pointing out the low fees on Ethereum mainnet today and the improved user experience for on-chain traders. Others remained cautious, with Michael and Mike acknowledging that L2s often force temporary centralization for usability—but that the balance can shift back as tooling improves.
Here, the tension between ideals and realities came to the surface. Is the goal to maintain full decentralization at every layer? Or is it more pragmatic to centralize temporarily if it gets us closer to the mass adoption DeFi has always promised?
For SwapKit, the answer lies in thoughtful abstraction: building tooling that removes the need for users or devs to care which chain they’re using. Whether it’s EVM, non-EVM, or UTXO-based chains like Bitcoin, the future needs to feel invisible and unified—not fragmented.
Infrastructure and User Experience: Still a Long Road
Francesco pushed on another theme: complexity. He described the fatigue of managing dozens of smart wallets, fragmented across applications, protocols, and chains. The audience nodded—this was a shared pain point.
Here, Noyona stepped in with Nista’s goal of a DeFi super-app. Their vision is a single entry point where users can mint, earn, manage, and deploy—all in one place. Partnerships with wallets like MetaMask or Binance Wallet help make those experiences seamless, reducing the number of clicks and friction points. For Mike from EtherFi, this kind of convergence is exactly what’s needed to match TradFi’s UX, without giving up core crypto principles like self-custody.
And that’s the trade-off: full decentralization is rarely user-friendly. But centralized systems don’t offer freedom. The solution lies in layers of abstraction—well-designed interfaces that abstract complexity without hiding control. The pieces are coming together. Slowly.
RWA, Tokenized Stocks, and the Institutional Bridge
Toward the end of the discussion, the conversation turned toward real-world assets. The Robinhood stock-tokenization announcement, and OpenAI’s quick disavowal, triggered some of the spiciest takes. Are we watching a new wave of institutional “LARPing”—where companies pretend to go on-chain without embracing its open infrastructure?
Ash thought so. He called out the mimicry of DeFi by TradFi actors as a betrayal of Web3 ideals. Others were more optimistic. Michael Mogren described a test his developers ran—swapping BTC into Tesla stock through Jupiter. That experience, crossing native assets with real-world equities, was a glimpse of what’s possible when systems truly integrate.
Noyona elaborated on the opportunity: from tokenized treasuries to corporate bonds, RWAs offer a massive potential on-ramp for traditional capital. And more importantly, they can bring yield—real, regulated, off-chain yield—into DeFi protocols, which still struggle to find sustainable business models.
Where Does It All Go?
The panel ended on the big question: are we ready for a billion users?
The consensus wasn’t “yes.” It was: “we could be.” The infrastructure exists—or at least the building blocks do. What’s missing is polish. The next generation of DeFi won’t be won by whitepapers, it’ll be won by UX. Developers don’t need more chains—they need composable tooling. Users don’t need more tokens—they need reasons to care.
Most of all, the space needs to remember why it exists. As Ash put it, decentralization is not a marketing point. It’s a value system. And while finance is inherently cynical, the tools we build with it don’t have to be.
DeFi isn’t dead. It’s not done. It’s just maturing.
Watch the full discussion to hear it all for yourself—raw, unfiltered, and direct from the people building the next financial layer of the internet.
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
