Recently, I’ve been paying attention to a quite interesting phenomenon. The tokenized fund BUIDL launched by the traditional financial giant BlackRock is quietly rewriting the rules of DeFi.

You might not believe it, but in just 8 months, BUIDL’s market cap has surged to $500 million, ranking second in the entire RWA track. The logic behind this is actually quite clear—Wall Street has finally officially entered DeFi. As the world’s largest asset management company, managing over $10 trillion in assets, every move BlackRock makes represents a shift in traditional finance’s attitude toward the crypto market.

What is BUIDL essentially? Simply put, it’s a compliant tokenized investment fund that moves low-risk assets like U.S. Treasuries and repurchase agreements onto the blockchain. Each BUIDL token is pegged to $1, with an APY stabilized around 4.50%, and management fees only between 0.20% and 0.50%. What does this mean? It means institutional investors can finally find a product on the blockchain that offers stable returns without worrying about volatility.

Interestingly, ONDO Finance was the first to sense this opportunity. They began holding large amounts of BUIDL to support their own OUSG currency fund. Through BUIDL, ONDO not only achieved instant redemption but also lowered the investment threshold from $5 million to just $5,000. The result? ONDO’s price increased by over 200%, becoming the first project to be ignited by BUIDL.

Now, even more powerful collaborations are happening. Curve and Elixir have teamed up to bring BUIDL into the DeFi ecosystem. Elixir launched a synthetic dollar called deUSD, supported by stETH and U.S. Treasuries, with a supply that broke through $160 million in just four months. Meanwhile, Curve has been chosen as the main liquidity hub for deUSD.

What does this mean for Curve? My judgment is that this marks the beginning of a deep integration between traditional finance and DeFi. As more RWA assets are traded on Curve, its TVL will continue to grow, and trading fees will rise accordingly. More importantly, this attracts formal institutional capital. Traditional financial institutions, which once kept their distance from DeFi, now have a safe and compliant entry point.

However, there’s a detail worth noting. CRV’s price increased by 90% within five days after the related news was announced, but at the current price of $0.25 and a market cap of $375.35 million, it still lags significantly behind ONDO’s $2.5 billion market cap. This indicates that CRV’s value discovery has only just begun, and there’s still plenty of room for growth.

Honestly, the emergence of this innovative product BUIDL fundamentally solves the biggest pain point for traditional finance entering DeFi—compliance and risk control. It proves one thing: DeFi doesn’t necessarily have to be high-risk to attract large capital. On the contrary, products that offer stable returns and manageable risks are the real tools to attract institutional investment. As the BUIDL ecosystem continues to expand, infrastructure projects like Curve and ONDO are all benefiting. This wave of integration between traditional finance and DeFi has just entered an acceleration phase.