Why Vietnam Might Just Build the Future of DeFi
In Brief
The panel at Hack Seasons Opportunity Mixer in Hanoi discussed the complexity of decentralized finance, revealing that it still involves overcomplicating everything.
At the Hack Seasons Opportunity Mixer in Hanoi, the “DeFi vs Reality” panel pulled no punches. Featuring Andy Hung (Pacific Meta), Vugar Usi Zade (Bitget), Fred Hsu (D3), Kenny Li (Manta), and Kenneth Shek (Moca Network), the conversation tackled the uncomfortable truth behind what it really takes to win in decentralized finance today.
The consensus? We’re still overcomplicating everything.
Reality Check: We’re Still Building for Ourselves
One of the strongest through-lines in the conversation was simple but uncomfortable: the crypto space is still building for itself, not for the world.
Kenny Li opened with a clear take: speculation continues to drive user behavior across every subcategory of DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, and even infrastructure. People show up for the potential financial upside. “Crypto is DeFi,” he said, “because financial incentive is still the main reason users try anything.” But speculation isn’t scalable. The real test is whether we can transition from hype-driven adoption to tools that solve practical problems, at scale.
Fred Hsu argued that DeFi’s future lies in anchoring itself to the real world. His company, D3, is building DOMA, a blockchain for internet domain names. Hsu is focused on bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3 by treating domains like real-world assets: “You can tokenize a domain like chat.com, borrow against it, lend it, rationalize it, just like real estate.” For him, the foundational problem is trust.
“We all know how to trust a .com domain. But we don’t yet know how to trust a .sol or .crypto.” Bringing that familiar infrastructure on-chain is one way to build bridges between what works and what’s possible.
DeFi Isn’t Failing, But UX Is
If there was one point everyone agreed on, it was this: crypto user experience is still painfully broken.
Vugar Usi Zade brought it home with an example that felt all too familiar: “It takes at least 30 minutes to set up an exchange account with KYC, ID checks, and address approvals. And that’s before you touch a DEX.” In contrast, he pointed to Bitget’s hybrid model, where a user can instantly buy crypto, use a Mastercard to spend it in the real world, and interact with both CEX and on-chain products, without thinking about the tech behind it. “Users shouldn’t care about blockchains or gas,” he said. “They just want to do something, and it should work.”
Kenny Li offered an analogy that stuck: “Web2 is like Microsoft. Web3 is still Linux.” That is, Web3 tools might be powerful, but they’re not designed for most people. “Even I get nervous sending a transaction,” he admitted. “It’s a string of random letters and numbers. You hope it works, but you’re never sure.” That lack of confidence, across wallets, DEXs, chains, continues to keep billions of potential users on the sidelines.
Kenneth Shek offered a glimpse of what a smoother future could look like. He argued that we’re already past the “wallet friction” stage. Thanks to infrastructure like smart accounts and telecom integrations, there’s no longer a need for users to manage private keys or pay gas fees. “The next frontier,” he said, “is educating users on financial literacy, and abstracting the complexity entirely.”
Fred Hsu added a painfully familiar example: copying and pasting a 30-character wallet address and hoping you got it right. “That’s not how we onboard the next billion users,” he said. “With domain-based identities, it becomes sending from andy.soul to fred.ape, simple, human, safe.” This convergence of user-friendly design and trusted infrastructure, he believes, is what will finally open the floodgates from Web2 to Web3.
The Power User Trap
A particularly thoughtful point came up when Vugar reminded the audience that crypto’s so-called “retail users” are anything but ordinary. “The average crypto user today is a power user. They trade, they farm, they speculate. But when we talk about adoption, we’re not talking about them. We need to build products for the masses, for the person who doesn’t even know what a blockchain is.”
Right now, most dApps, exchanges, and wallets are built with that power user in mind. But for crypto to scale beyond its own echo chamber, builders need to stop optimizing for experts and start thinking like consumer product designers. “You don’t need to know how TCP/IP works to use the internet,” Kenny noted. “The same should be true for crypto.”
Why Vietnam?
As the panel moved toward closing thoughts, attention shifted to Vietnam itself. Why does this country matter so much to the future of DeFi?
For all the speakers, Vietnam represented more than just a high-adoption market; it’s a builder’s playground. Vugar shared that Bitget doesn’t just market in Vietnam, it builds here. “We have over 300 employees in Vietnam. It’s not just a place to acquire users, it’s a place to create products.”
Fred Hsu added that Vietnam’s developer ecosystem, combined with positive government interest (including a new national digital ID chain), could make the country one of the most crypto-savvy nations in the world. And Kenny? He smiled and said, “I found an opportunity here, but I’m not going to tell you what it is yet. I want to get there first.”
Kenneth Shek connected Vietnam’s potential to a larger trend: governments and regulators are no longer something builders can afford to ignore. From the UAE to Vietnam, the shift is clear: collaboration with regulators is no longer a risk, but an advantage.
In the End, DeFi Is Still About People
The panel ended on a hopeful, if sober, note: technology matters, but it’s people who define success. DeFi won’t win by being more complex. It’ll win by being more useful. By being faster. Safer. Easier. More human.
It’s not about what DeFi could do, it’s about what it actually does, today, for the people who need it most. And in a city like Hanoi, where global capital meets grassroots innovation, that future doesn’t feel hypothetical, it feels close.
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About The Author
Victoria is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
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Victoria is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
