ARK Invest’s Lorenzo Valente sees specialized RWA markets redistributing power across DeFi, which could give customer-facing applications greater control over liquidity and revenue. That evolution could reshape fee allocation without triggering a broad migration toward app-specific chains.
Key Takeaways
Specialized RWA venues could reduce the importance of major crypto pairs for venue success.Control of users and order flow may give applications fee leverage.Most popular applications are expected to continue relying on shared infrastructure.Real-world asset (RWA) growth is changing how trading venues compete for liquidity and economic influence across decentralized finance (DeFi). In comments provided exclusively to Bitcoin.com News, ARK Invest Director of Research for Digital Assets Lorenzo Valente examined whether expanding RWA-linked derivatives markets will remain concentrated on crypto-native trading venues.
Winning crypto trading historically required bitcoin and major layer-1 liquidity, which attracted professional traders and supported deeper markets. New platforms consequently faced direct competition from established exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.
Valente summarized the competitive change facing emerging onchain venues and established cryptocurrency exchanges:
“You can now build large onchain outcomes and primitives with essentially zero BTC/ETH market share by specializing in RWAs instead.”
Order Flow Could Give Trade.xyz Greater Fee LeverageContinued growth by Trade.xyz could change its commercial relationship with Hyperliquid if the application becomes the exchange’s primary source of activity.
Valente addressed the effect concentrated order flow could have on the economic relationship between Trade.xyz and Hyperliquid:
“If trade.xyz grows to 90% of Hyperliquid volume, which I see as very possible, I don’t see why they wouldn’t demand a larger share of the overall user fee.”
Although Valente noted that “leaving Hyperliquid entirely is a separate question,” he anticipates negotiations over the economics once the application gains sufficient influence.
Independent Chains Are Likely to Suit Only a Minority of AppsValente framed the decision around “what is the app’s opportunity cost” and “how easily can it fork the infra without losing its users?” User retention ultimately determines whether technical independence remains commercially viable.
The ARK Invest research director outlined the threshold an application would need to cross before operating its own chain:
“The most popular apps launching their own chains is one possible answer, but it only makes sense once an app’s fee bill exceeds the value of the liquidity, users, and security it’s renting. Some will get there, most won’t.”
The broader debate, which Valente calls “the million dollar question for the industry,” centers on L1 monetization power, the durability of network effects, and whether applications are paying the right price for blockspace and distribution.
