At our RockawayX Summit in London (held alongside Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit), we hosted a panel that captured how tokenization is transforming some of the most established sectors in finance.
Moderated by our Chief Growth Officer, Samantha Bohbot, the conversation brought together three speakers from the RockawayX portfolio who are reshaping real-world markets onchain:
- Dan Roberts (OnRe) – reinsurance
- Matteo Pandolfi (Pareto Credit) – institutional credit infrastructure
- Arun Krishnakumar (Kamino Finance) – Solana’s largest lending platform
Main Takeaways
- $20 billion in liquidations tested DeFi infrastructure but systems prevailed, proving the strength of platforms like Kamino.
- Tokenization introduces transparency, composability, and global access to asset classes that were previously closed off to retail and smaller institutions.
- Credit infrastructure onchain enables portable, reusable borrower identities that redefine private credit.
- Reinsurance, a 350-year-old market, finds new life as a liquid, composable, onchain asset class.
Setting the Stage
When opening the panel, Bohbot framed tokenization through the lens that drives RockawayX investment decisions in DeFi projects.
“A lot of VC funds look at projects somewhat indiscriminately,” she said. “But for us, we get to ask a more direct question: Is this something we would actually want to put money into ourselves?”
That question defines what we consider “interesting.” A project isn’t compelling simply because it’s built on blockchain; it has to offer an experience or risk-return profile that adds something new to the market.
“Really, what we’re focused on,” Bohbot continued, “are projects that bring real-world assets onchain, and then combine that with a new or optimized financial function, whether it’s how you borrow, lend, or trade because it’s happening on a blockchain.”
From there, the discussion explored how that principle comes to life across three very different verticals: reinsurance, credit, and equities. Each speaker illustrated how tokenization an operational shift already underway: reinsurance contracts that trade as liquid assets, credit lines that form and adjust autonomously, and lending markets that withstand multibillion-dollar stress events without losses.
The Stress Test: $20 Billion in Liquidations
The discussion began with a timely example of why institutional-grade infrastructure matters.
When markets plunged earlier this month, $19.5 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated across the crypto ecosystem, making the largest single-day liquidation event on record.
Amid the chaos, Kamino Finance, Solana’s largest lending platform with over $5 billion in assets, stood out for one reason: zero bad debt.
“Honestly, that night there wasn’t much sleep,” recalled Arun Krishnakumar, who leads Kamino’s institutional growth. “Our first step in any crisis is operational. Our CTO drops a link in our Telegram, and the whole leadership team jumps on a call. We stay on until the situation’s resolved.”
This time, though, the system handled everything autonomously. Kamino’s liquidation engine processed around 3,000 liquidation events, roughly $20 million in total, with a median liquidation size of 0.07% of user assets.
“The liquidation engine has been iterated and fine-tuned for years, so it executed exactly as designed,” Krishnakumar said. “The harder problems aren’t the big crashes, they’re rumor-driven events that trigger panic or depegs. Structurally, our risk management meant this was almost a non-event for Kamino.”
Defining Tokenization Beyond the Buzzword
Next, the discussion turned to tokenization.
“We hear the word everywhere now. In reports, panels, even marketing decks,” Bohbot said. “But at some point you have to pause and ask: what does it actually mean?”
Dan Roberts, founder of OnRe, began by grounding the concept in practical terms.
“Tokenization, to me, means taking existing value and applying cryptographic, onchain logic to it,” Roberts explained. “You’re using the same infrastructure that supports cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but mapping it onto assets that already exist in the real economy.”
That simple shift, he noted, introduces qualities that never existed before in traditional reinsurance: transparency, 24/7 liquidity, and global access. For an industry that still settles in quarterly cycles, the change is seismic.
Bohbot pushed further, “Isn’t that just digitization with a facelift? Why is tokenization better, say in credit?”
Matteo Pandolfi, founder of Pareto Credit, pointed to the unique power of composability.
“It’s definitely not just a facelift. In traditional credit, your borrower history is fragmented and closed,” he said. “Onchain, you can create a credit profile that’s immutable, shareable, and portable across different protocols. That means a borrower’s record can be reused across DeFi or even CeFi, unlocking entirely new credit markets.”
The New Financial Workflow: Composability in Action
To illustrate how tokenization unlocks new possibilities, Bohbot pointed to a real-world example connecting Kamino and OnRe.
“When I first heard about reinsurance, I had no idea how an individual could even get exposure to that asset class,” she said. “It’s institutional, opaque, and hard to access. But with OnRe, I can connect my wallet, purchase exposure to a real-world reinsurance pool, and get a receipt for that asset. Then, through composability, I can take that receipt and borrow against it on Kamino.”
That simple workflow of purchasing a real-world insurance asset, then leveraging it in DeFi, doesn’t exist in traditional finance. It’s entirely native to blockchain.
Meanwhile, Krishnakumar noted that institutions are starting to recognize the power of this interconnectedness.
“They’re looking for exposure beyond pure crypto volatility,” he said. “Something like tokenized fixed income or real-world credit, and that’s what these tokenization projects deliver.”
The exchange captured why tokenization matters. It’s not about digitizing assets for their own sake. It’s about creating new financial workflows that are more open, composable, and efficient than anything in TradFi.
Users and Adoption
As the conversation turned toward adoption, Bohbot asked the speakers who their users actually are and what they’re getting out of these tokenized systems in practice.
Krishnakumar began with a personal example.
“During that Friday event, my Kamino positions fell by about 50%,” he said. “It was rough, but I saw it as a buying opportunity. I had some OnRe positions, so I unbound those and rotated into Kamino, a way to diversify my exposure across asset classes.”
That kind of fluid capital movement, redeploying capital between distinct onchain asset classes, is becoming more common among sophisticated users. It demonstrates a deeper shift: tokenization is enabling investors to manage portfolios across asset classes without going offchain.
Still, Krishnakumar emphasized that tokenization isn’t a silver bullet.
“Tokenizing an asset is only the start,” he said. “It doesn’t automatically create liquidity or adoption. Distribution, partnerships, and integrations all take real effort. That’s where teams like OnRe have done incredibly well.”
Roberts agreed. While reinsurance remains a largely institutional domain, OnRe’s early users are mostly crypto-native investors drawn by its transparency and performance.
“Reinsurance is a 350-year-old industry. The main market in London is literally still in the same old building,” he said. “So having smart, active crypto investors engage with it, analyze it, and trade it is exactly what we wanted.”
Credit’s Next Chapter
When asked what success looks like for Pareto Credit in the next three years, Pandolfi painted a vision that extends far beyond DeFi.
“Right now, we’re focused mainly on institutional borrowers and lenders. Funds, asset managers, structured credit desks,” he said. “Over the next few years, success means expanding beyond that to include corporates and fintechs who want to launch their own credit lines onchain.”
Pareto’s goal is to make onchain credit infrastructure the invisible backbone of everyday finance. While users may interact through familiar fintech or CeFi interfaces, the underlying credit rails will be fully onchain, automated, transparent, and low-cost.
“The vision is that yield and credit infrastructure like ours become the backend for mainstream financial apps,” Pandolfi explained. “The front end stays user-friendly, but the backend is DeFi.”
Closing
To close the session, Bohbot posed a final thought experiment:
“What happens first? A sovereign bond issued fully onchain, tokenized real estate at scale, or a public company with its balance sheet fully tokenized?”
All three speakers agreed: public companies will likely move first.
Across the panel, one theme stood out: DeFi assets and infrastructure are maturing.
- Kamino has shown that DeFi systems can withstand multi-billion-dollar stress tests without losses.
- Pareto is building credit rails that could become the invisible backend of mainstream finance.
- OnRe is transforming one of the world’s oldest financial industries into a liquid, composable market accessible to anyone.
Each represents a distinct path converging on the same destination: a financial system that is programmable, transparent, and globally interoperable.
