if you’re like me thinking why retail still trades so much memecoins or perps but not doing much holy DeFi here’s why: 1) DeFi in ‘26 is a minefield: you’ve protocols blowing up left & right: - some due to opsec (eg. drift, kelp) - economic risks (eg. neutrl) we're seeing 2-3 small protocols blow up ~every week now 2) assume you take the risks: but then also you’ve p low yields blue-chip assets at top protocols like aave, morpho hardly give you 5-6% apy at max eg. there's $250m at kamino just yielding 2.6% apy??! ofc, whales or foundation treasuries can’t off-ramp and have no choice but to do TVL deals & put in this DeFi protocols imagine this: if you’re a retail user who has $5k left will you put in a random protocol for 15% apr knowing your money can blow-up anytime or simply buy memecoins or even gamble in prediction markets in hope to 10x or go 0 casino math makes latter far more lucrative 3) old nyc uncs already knows this trend: hence they declared crypto ‘institutional’ - slapping the clarity act and made the narrative that crypto is just a backend for wall street to push their ‘governance tokens’ it’s good to see crypto’s institutional growth but trying to kill what makes crypto exciting is as sinful as ‘memecoin pump & dump’ both can def. co-exist 4) don’t get me wrong: i love DeFi and love nerdy financial engineering a ton but even as a pro DeFi user of ‘23 (when i’d have used 100+ protocols) putting a huge chunk of my portfolio isn’t good from a r/r perspective now ofc in ‘23 era, you’d farm airdrops, get a $1b+ tge and that’d make it worth it but now most vc-backed token launches are awful to make it farm-worthy and it's same for all my crypto friends i still get nerdsnipped by good DeFi mechanics & exotic assets or interesting sources of yields and still put couple of Ks in them (imo: if you still find an underrated DeFi protocol which can have a good narrative later - you should still deposit who knows it gives you unexpected airdrops like uni/jto) 5) crypto or even stocks is now fast finance: active investing is roaring back exponentially people wanna trade and rotate fast (either memes and stocks) they don’t have to worry much about blowups or their capital getting stuck anywhere (they've stablecoins or bank accounts to park money) as a builder: stop optimising for TVL, DeFi is not just TVL - you can optimise for just volumes or ‘fast finance’ and make tons of money and still perform finest financial engineering 6) tokens are beautiful: do any financial engineering around tokens (eg. memecoins paired with stocks and using creator fees mechanics) and you'll see the true power of crypto composability eg. a token on solana is instantly available at launch to 100s of terminals, wallets, apps etc i.e so you get instant distribution and leverage network effects tldr: long financial engineering, long fast finance!