DeFi Wealth Management New Paradigm: Simplified Operations, Reshaping Ecology

In mid-April, a startup named Glider secured $4 million in funding, led by the well-known venture capital firm a16z's startup accelerator CSX. Glider aims to carve out a niche in the seemingly simple yet actually complex field of on-chain investment. The company benefits from the emerging technologies such as Intent and LLM, but Decentralized Finance as a whole does need to be recomposed to simplify the investment threshold.

The era of DeFi Lego is over, and the era of securely coupled wealth management is approaching. Glider started as an internal entrepreneurial project of a certain company at the end of 2023, initially in the form of Onchain Bots, which combine different operational steps to facilitate user investment and usage. This model of assisting users in wealth management has a long history in both traditional finance and Decentralized Finance.

Currently, Glider is still in the internal development stage, and its general idea includes:

1. Connect existing Decentralized Finance tools through API integration, including leading and emerging protocols in various sectors, to build a B2B2C customer acquisition logic.
2. Allow users to build investment strategies and support sharing, facilitating follow-up investment, copy trading, or collective investment for higher returns.

With the combination of technologies such as AI Agents, LLMs, intent, and chain abstraction, building such a tech stack is not difficult. The real challenge lies in traffic operation and establishing a trust mechanism. The flow of user funds is always a sensitive topic, which is also the main reason why on-chain products have not yet replaced centralized exchanges. Most users can accept decentralization in exchange for fund security, but fundamentally do not accept decentralization if it increases security risks.

In 2020, a similar project received investment from a certain investment institution, aimed at helping users cope with the complexity of DeFi strategies. However, most users did not use the product for the long term. On-chain yield strategies are an open market, where retail investors find it difficult to compete with whales in terms of server and capital volume, leading to most yield opportunities being inaccessible to retail investors. Compared to the unsustainability of yields, security issues and strategy optimization are relegated to a secondary position. In an era of high returns, there is almost no room for sound financial management.

We are now entering the era of asset management for the masses. ETF tools are not only applicable to the stock market; certain exchanges made attempts as early as 2021. From a technical perspective, asset tokenization has ultimately given rise to the RWA paradigm. How to achieve the on-chain implementation of ETF tools has become the focus of entrepreneurship. The calculation and display of APY on certain platforms, along with the continuous operation of other projects, indicate that there is a demand for this in the market.

However, due to on-chain transparency, no one can truly hide efficient strategies without being mimicked and modified, leading to an arms race that ultimately causes returns to converge. This could evolve into yet another round of the boring game of big fish eating small fish. However, these projects have consistently failed to redefine the market like some well-known DEX or prediction markets.

After the super cycle of Meme coins ends, the old forms of Decentralized Finance are difficult to revive. Has the industry already peaked? Is this temporary or permanent? This relates to whether Web3 is truly the next step for the internet or a 2.0 version of fintech. If it is the former, the way human information flow and capital flow operate will be reshaped; if it is the latter, then existing payment and investment platforms may be the endpoint.

From Glider's strategy, it can be seen that on-chain yields are transforming into an era of civilian asset management. Just as index funds and retirement plans have jointly created a long-term bull market in the US stock market, the massive amount of funds and a large number of retail investors indicate a huge demand for stable income in the market. This is the significance of the next generation of Decentralized Finance. In addition to Ethereum, other public chains still need to undertake the innovative responsibilities of Internet 3.0, while DeFi should become Financial Technology 2.0.

Glider has added AI-assisted features, but from the early DeFi information display platform, to later attempts at combination strategies, and now to a stable operating project, the approximately 5% stable on-chain yield still attracts a user base outside of centralized exchanges.

In the future, the on-chain of interest-bearing assets will become a trend. Currently, in the cryptocurrency market, only a few types of products such as exchanges, stablecoins, Decentralized Finance, and public chains have truly gained market recognition. Other product types, including NFTs and Meme coins, are merely temporary asset issuance models, lacking the ability for sustained self-maintenance.

However, RWA( real-world assets) have been taking root and growing since 2022, especially after the collapse of certain well-known projects. As industry insiders say, people do not truly care about decentralization, but are more concerned about returns and stability. Even without government actively embracing Bitcoin and blockchain, the productization and practicality of RWA are accelerating. If traditional finance can embrace digitization and informatization, there is no reason to abandon blockchain.

In this round of cycles, complex asset types and on-chain DeFi strategies have severely hindered users of centralized exchanges from migrating on-chain. But at least the massive liquidity from exchanges can be attracted on-chain:

• A certain project converts fee income into on-chain income through a benefits alliance;
• Another project will bring perpetual contracts on the exchange onto the chain through LP Token.

These examples all prove that liquidity on-chain is feasible, and RWA also proves that asset on-chain is equally feasible. The industry is currently in a peculiar moment, with Ethereum being considered lacking in vitality, but in reality, many projects are going on-chain. In a sense, overly large protocols are detrimental to the development of applications; perhaps this is the last night before public chains return to infrastructure and application scenarios shine brightly.

In addition to the products mentioned above, some open-source APY calculation tools have been running for many years. Various platforms have their own focuses, showcasing the APY of projects, and the emphasis of yield tools has shifted over time, becoming increasingly concentrated on interest-bearing assets.

At present, if such tools increase trust in AI, they will face the issue of responsibility allocation; if they enhance human intervention, it will lower user experience. A possible solution is to separate information flow and capital flow, create a UGC strategy community, foster internal competition among project parties, and benefit retail investors.

Glider has gained market attention due to investment from well-known venture capital, but long-standing issues in the field remain. Authorization and risk issues involve not only wallets and funds but also whether AI has the capability to satisfy humans. How will liability be allocated if AI investments result in significant losses?

Nevertheless, this world is still worth exploring the unknown. Cryptocurrency, as a public space that divides the world, will continue to thrive.