Author: Spencer Bogart, General Partner at Blockchain Capital

Translation: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

The on-chain economy has a unique set of characteristics, including programmability, composability, and global distribution. This means that anyone can build, anyone can publish, and anything can freely access all the content constructed by others. Protocols are tested in a global adversarial environment using real funds in production settings. Ultimately, this creates an ecosystem that is faster and more open than anything seen in the financial world before.

However, when it comes to truly large pools of capital, these features also present a problem. Institutional investors and investment committees with fiduciary responsibilities need to assess the risks of their investment environment. The permissionless nature of on-chain infrastructure, along with newer, untested protocols potentially leading to unforeseen outcomes, makes this risk assessment more challenging than in more controlled environments.

For the on-chain economy to fully realize its potential, both open innovation and robust capital are necessary. I believe we are starting to see pathways to achieve both.

What is forming is a dual-layer architecture.

The first layer is our existing permissionless environment, in which composability and open innovation drive the ecosystem's development. This layer will not disappear, nor should it.

The second layer consists of a series of chains, whether they are L2 chains, L1 chains, or other types of chains, most built on the same codebase and security infrastructure, but differing in how they handle risk distribution at the tail end. The security models of these chains include the ability to pause or freeze transactions in the event of extreme occurrences. For institutional capital, this capability represents a risk management feature that makes the entire risk exposure manageable.

We can see this today in secondary organizations: some secondary organizations have established security councils that hold certain freezing permissions. Recently, we witnessed this mechanism in action when Arbitrum's security council intervened during the Kelp DAO incident to recover funds.

These two layers serve different purposes, which is key. The permissionless layer is a crucible, where protocols are built under real pressure, utilizing real funds in an adversarial environment. The protocols that emerge will be stronger. The institutional layer allows for the large-scale deployment of funds that have formal authorization and compliance requirements.

The crossover between them is particularly important.

A protocol that has been honed over many years in a specific environment is likely to have withstood real security events, demonstrating reliable operational capabilities across various market conditions and establishing a mature governance framework, providing a reliable pathway to extend its influence to the institutional level. It can be deployed at the institutional level and secure a deeper pool of funds than what a purely crypto-native environment could obtain.

The lifecycle becomes: build and publish permissionlessly. Accept testing in a public environment. Prove its capabilities. Then scale to the institutional level and obtain funding on a completely different scale.

This is indeed an excellent architecture. The open and experimental side of the ecosystem continues to leverage its advantages, launching new protocols and using crypto-native capital to bear initial risks and break boundaries. Meanwhile, the institutional layer provides ample liquidity and stability, thereby raising the ceiling of what successful protocols can achieve. In this world, the rewards for gaining institutional trust are also significantly heightened. The drive for innovation is consequently strengthened, as the rewards for success are richer than ever before.

However, the real challenge lies in how to handle cold starts: the blockchains most favored by institutional capital may not be the ones where the best applications currently reside. The protocols with the highest transaction volumes and long-standing track records will produce profound network effects on blockchains that do not offer security assurances. How to solve this issue—whether to deploy optimal protocol choices on institution-facing blockchains or to build new protocols from the ground up targeting institutional architectures, or whether institutional capital will ultimately accept existing blockchains—will be one of the dynamics to watch.

But the overall architecture feels very reasonable. The on-chain economy is constructing a true capital structure, with different pools of capital flowing into a shared ecosystem. The permissionless base continues to create new things. The institutional layer provides depth. And the connection between the two allows the entire system to operate.

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