DWF Labs Broadcast

The first real-world Bitcoin transaction. 16 years later, the network looks a little different.

Tokenized stocks, private equity, VC assets, all moving onchain. May 2026 snapshot 👆

-13.4% → 40.5% → 49.1% The Hiive 50 secondary market index tracking the top 50 pre-IPO companies has gone from underperforming the S&P 500 to nearly tripling it in two years. What changed is that companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are approaching IPOs at record valuations, and the average time to go public has stretched to 12 years, up from 4-5 in the 1990s. Hiive's average transaction size topped $1M last year. The transaction size shows that the market exists, but it's built for institutional buyers. Retail demand is spilling onto on-chain alternatives. More from DWF Ventures here.

Non-professional traders using AI are not necessarily guaranteed success. Andrei Grachev explains in a discussion with RWA Week 👆

Prediction market positions have real and quantifiable value, but right now, that capital is inert. Currently, lending protocols face two problems: → Positions can collapse to zero instantly at resolution, potentially creating bad debt with no liquidation window → Regulatory uncertainty around whether event contracts qualify as legitimate financial instruments Both barriers have weakened considerably. Kalshi's CFTC win established event contracts as regulated derivatives. DWF Ventures explores more on the shift from bet to balance sheet.

Two weeks of on-ramps: → Charles Schwab opens spot crypto to millions of clients → J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance ran a cross-border tokenized Treasury settlement pilot → Total RWAs crossed $33B → Tokenized Treasuries crossed $15B The CLARITY Act clearing committee 15-9 is also huge news for the industry - it's the closest crypto has ever been to a comprehensive federal regulatory framework in the U.S. Every cycle builds rails, but this one is building the on-ramps to match. Full analysis: https://www.dwf-labs.com/research/eyes-on-the-market-the-on-ramps-are-multiplying

Andrei Grachev on the biggest question for less liquid tokenized RWAs 👆

Companies are staying private longer than before: 12 years on average, up from 4-5 in the 1990s. That means the most valuable growth phase now happens behind closed doors. Crypto is building the rails to change that, with SPV-backed tokens, synthetic contracts, and closed-end funds competing to democratize pre-IPO access. DWF Ventures explores the structural risks, persistent premiums, and the necessary stress tests here. If you're building, DWF Ventures is looking for projects to support. Reach out here: https://www.dwf-labs.com/ventures

Tokenization is like the internet in 1996. Andrei Grachev explains why 👆

There is no comprehensive framework for evaluating AI agents in DeFi yet. Historical performance is the default benchmark, but DWF Ventures identifies four factors that are stronger indicators of a well-performing agent: 1️⃣ How it contains losses when conditions turn south 2️⃣ Whether transparency exposes its strategy to copytrades, or whether opacity lets the creator front-run its own users 3️⃣ Whether its data feeds have single dependencies 4️⃣ Whether smart contracts are audited with proper fund custody architecture DWF Ventures explains more here.

Andrei Grachev on AI x DeFi use cases in asset management with RWA Week🔥 Date: May 13 2026 Time: 12:30 PM UTC Tune in here.

Join us for HotDesk Wednesday at our Dubai office 🤝 Register to work alongside our team and enjoy access to our premium workspace: https://luma.com/56v1o9ga The office address will be shared upon approval.

AI agents may already be outperforming humans in one specific area of DeFi: yield optimization. Gizatech's ARMA application has generated over $4B in agentic volume with just $19M in AUM - a volume-to-AUM ratio that reflects how frequently the agent rebalances capital to capture yield. The result is over 9.75% APR for USDC, clearing vanilla lending on Aave or Morpho even after fees. However, scalability remains an open question, and the protocol is not yet battle-tested at the size of major DeFi protocols. More from DWF Ventures here.

Prediction markets today behave like spot markets with a built-in ceiling, and leverage has been difficult to introduce into prediction markets due to the presence of jump risk. Every share is capped at $1 with limited upside. Now two solutions are being built: → Epoch-based fee models where risk is repriced in short rolling windows → Perp contracts on prediction outcomes themselves, wrapping binary events in familiar derivatives infrastructure DWF Ventures explores more here.

TradFi will have to compete with crypto, not the other way around. Andrei Grachev shares with Cointelegraph's Robert Baggs 👆

RWAs need to trade seamlessly. Andrei Grachev explains👆

Prediction markets hit $6B+ in weekly notional volume across 8 of the last 15 weeks. Kalshi is valued at $22B while Polymarket is at $12B, with a $15B round reportedly in the works. However, a disconnect exists: a trader sitting on $500K in prediction market positions can't borrow against, leverage, or deploy it elsewhere. The sector has institutional scale but lacks some structural frameworks for maximum efficiency. DWF Ventures on the gap holding prediction markets back: https://x.com/DWFVentures/status/2049836194792689966

Join us for HotDesk Wednesday at our Dubai office 🤝 Register to work alongside our team and enjoy access to our premium workspace: https://luma.com/vf1t2d7s The office address will be shared upon approval.

Catch up with us in our April recap👇 1. Our media presence continues to grow. In print in The Korea Times, Andrei Grachev discussed why Asia should be paying closer attention to South Korea's stablecoin opportunity. 2. Andrei was also featured in Euronews on why Wall Street is turning to tokenization and 24/7 trading. 3. FinanceFeeds featured Andrei discussing perpetual funding rates and what positioning indicators they can provide for traders. 4. We hosted the webinar "Onchain Assets and the Next Wave of Killer Apps?", live on our social media. 5. DWF Ventures explored a question the market is still uncovering: will AI agents take over DeFi? The research covers autonomous execution, risk management, and what happens when agents start allocating capital at scale. 6. DWF Ventures published a deep dive on the evolution of RWAs, from tokenized securities to perpetual-style structures and 24/7 markets. The infrastructure layer is being rebuilt in real time. 7. Additionally, the DWF Ventures team researched prediction markets as financial derivatives: why billions in capital remain locked and unproductive, and what structural shifts are starting to change that. 8. We published Eyes on the Market Vol. 9 - "From Concept to Rails." The thesis: tokenization is moving past proof-of-concept into production infrastructure. 9. Eyes on the Market Vol. 10 "Rails, Rotation, and Real-World Deployment" looks into how capital is rotating into productive onchain assets, and the data backs it up. 10. A major DeFi exploit tested market confidence, but the response was faster and more coordinated than in previous cycles. RWAs kept climbing regardless. Vol. 11 unpacks it. 11. Falcon Finance announced its integration with Ondo Finance. Still early. Still building. See you in May 🛠

Billions flow into prediction markets, but most of it is not capital-efficient. Capital is unable to be borrowed against, leveraged, or deployed elsewhere. Jump risk, pricing difficulty, and regulatory uncertainty have led to slower adoption. But the structural barriers are dropping, and DWF Ventures explores what's shifting and why it matters. If you are building, reach out to the DWF Ventures team here.