During our roundtable, @anna_petrenkoo (CBDO, @everstake_pool) said the Ethereum community is trying to fix staking concentration before it becomes a real problem. She mentioned that bigger staking operators, Everstake included, run validators across hundreds of locations and servers, and that their job is to keep that infrastructure as secure and diversified as possible and not concentrate it. @Oliver_Yates (Co-Founder & CEO, @Aplo_crypto) highlighted that Coinbase Custody is the custodian for most crypto ETFs, but institutional crypto is not limited to crypto ETFs. He said most banks that do not yet have a digital asset offering are focusing in 2026 on corporate banking work, such as helping customers get financing through tokenization or put some of their actual assets on-chain, and every single one he has seen so far runs the custody stack this needs in-house with one or more third-party technology providers. So, he does not see digital asset custody staying super concentrated if everything beyond pure cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, ETH and Solana is counted. Antonio Sundas (Senior Sales Manager, @CryptoFinanceAG) added that on both staking and custody, it is the responsibility of ETF providers, banks or institutions to diversify. He said Coinbase was probably the best of the few options back when the Bitcoin ETFs were allocating custody. Furthermore, he mentioned that things are now changing in the US at the Federal Reserve and around the Clarity Act, so more and more options to diversify custody are going to be available in case an even better one appears.

@anna_petrenkoo (CBDO, @everstake_pool) says institutional crypto did not unbundle because anyone planned it, but because bundling failed publicly, and more than once. With FTX, custody, trading and market making sat inside one legal entity with one set of keys, so when that entity had a bad week everything behind it went with it. She argues that when the custodian, staking provider, prime broker and ETF issuer are separately regulated and audited entities, a failure at one does not cascade into the others, and that complexity clients can audit beats simplicity they cannot verify. @Oliver_Yates (CEO & Co-Founder, @Aplo_crypto) says separating every service, from the custodian to the venue or provider for execution, technically makes a setup safer, but with what the market offers today it comes with a trade-off in liquidity, available assets and products. A big part of market liquidity sits on Binance, anyone who wants options on an order book more or less has to use Deribit, and no single custodian right now offers off-venue settlement for all of them. Crypto has no single clearing house, so things are missing that make it a trade-off, and most institutions end up choosing and keep some counterparty risk depending on the products they want access to. @Tony_Sundas (Senior Sales Manager, @CryptoFinanceAG) says the stack fragmented because clients have different needs, and someone who wants speed picks a different provider than someone who wants to stake and keep ownership. Antonio helped BBVA in Switzerland set up its first crypto custody solution, and he says regulation that lagged behind in his first years at BBVA in Switzerland also drove the split. The Swiss regulator FINMA was ready in 2017, but Europe took five more years to give clear direction, which made bringing the project to Spain very cumbersome.

New episode with @mfisher10x, CEO & Co-Founder of @katana, is out! We spoke about: - Chain-owned liquidity & yield composition - Institutions entering DeFi & what they need - Whether Katana is still DeFi or something new entirely - The super app vision & more Timestamps: 00:00 Highlights 00:37 Introduction 01:30 Matthew’s Background & Katana 02:48 Building a Chain 04:05 Yield Composition 05:38 Sushi & Morpho 07:57 Gauntlet, Steakhouse Financial & Transparency 10:23 Staking Design 14:07 Governance vs Yield without Homework 16:45 Emissions & Chain-owned liquidity 19:36 Nasib Fathi & NFK Podcast 20:06 Attracted Builders 21:58 Institutions & DeFi 23:57 Katana in 3Y-5Y 25:37 Competition on Perps 28:15 Super App Vision 30:11 Integration of New Primitives 34:22 Risks Beyond Hacks & Bear Markets 36:32 Closing Remarks 37:10 Ending All links are below.