ARK refutes a16z: institutions will use DeFi, not permissioned chains

Deep Tide TechFlow message: On July 17, Cointelegraph reported that ARK Invest research director Lorenzo Valente publicly rebutted a16z’s crypto claim that “traditional finance will adopt permissioned chains rather than DeFi,” pointing out that public blockchains such as Ethereum have already shown a growth momentum that outpaces private-chain initiatives in the tokenized assets space.

Valente emphasized that crypto-native companies such as Circle and Coinbase—not traditional financial institutions—are better positioned to build the next-generation financial infrastructure. Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also questioned a16z’s view, saying institutions would directly adopt DeFi’s underlying architecture and then layer enterprise-grade control such as compliance and custody on top of it, rather than fully switching to a permissioned-chain model.