RWAs need to trade seamlessly.

Andrei Grachev explains👆

TradFi will have to compete with crypto, not the other way around.

Andrei Grachev shares with Cointelegraph's Robert Baggs 👆

Prediction markets today behave like spot markets with a built-in ceiling, and leverage has been difficult to introduce into prediction markets due to the presence of jump risk.

Every share is capped at $1 with limited upside.

Now two solutions are being built:

→ Epoch-based fee models where risk is repriced in short rolling windows
→ Perp contracts on prediction outcomes themselves, wrapping binary events in familiar derivatives infrastructure

DWF Ventures explores more here.

AI agents may already be outperforming humans in one specific area of DeFi: yield optimization.

Gizatech's ARMA application has generated over $4B in agentic volume with just $19M in AUM - a volume-to-AUM ratio that reflects how frequently the agent rebalances capital to capture yield.

The result is over 9.75% APR for USDC, clearing vanilla lending on Aave or Morpho even after fees. However, scalability remains an open question, and the protocol is not yet battle-tested at the size of major DeFi protocols.

More from DWF Ventures here.

Join us for HotDesk Wednesday at our Dubai office 🤝

Register to work alongside our team and enjoy access to our premium workspace: https://luma.com/56v1o9ga

The office address will be shared upon approval.

Andrei Grachev on AI x DeFi use cases in asset management with RWA Week🔥

Date: May 13 2026
Time: 12:30 PM UTC

Tune in here.

There is no comprehensive framework for evaluating AI agents in DeFi yet.

Historical performance is the default benchmark, but DWF Ventures identifies four factors that are stronger indicators of a well-performing agent:

1️⃣ How it contains losses when conditions turn south

2️⃣ Whether transparency exposes its strategy to copytrades, or whether opacity lets the creator front-run its own users

3️⃣ Whether its data feeds have single dependencies

4️⃣ Whether smart contracts are audited with proper fund custody architecture

DWF Ventures explains more here.

Tokenization is like the internet in 1996.

Andrei Grachev explains why 👆

Companies are staying private longer than before: 12 years on average, up from 4-5 in the 1990s.

That means the most valuable growth phase now happens behind closed doors.

Crypto is building the rails to change that, with SPV-backed tokens, synthetic contracts, and closed-end funds competing to democratize pre-IPO access.

DWF Ventures explores the structural risks, persistent premiums, and the necessary stress tests here.

If you're building, DWF Ventures is looking for projects to support. Reach out here: https://www.dwf-labs.com/ventures

Andrei Grachev on the biggest question for less liquid tokenized RWAs 👆

Two weeks of on-ramps:

→ Charles Schwab opens spot crypto to millions of clients
→ J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance ran a cross-border tokenized Treasury settlement pilot
→ Total RWAs crossed $33B
→ Tokenized Treasuries crossed $15B

The CLARITY Act clearing committee 15-9 is also huge news for the industry - it's the closest crypto has ever been to a comprehensive federal regulatory framework in the U.S.

Every cycle builds rails, but this one is building the on-ramps to match.

Full analysis: https://www.dwf-labs.com/research/eyes-on-the-market-the-on-ramps-are-multiplying

Prediction market positions have real and quantifiable value, but right now, that capital is inert.

Currently, lending protocols face two problems:

→ Positions can collapse to zero instantly at resolution, potentially creating bad debt with no liquidation window
→ Regulatory uncertainty around whether event contracts qualify as legitimate financial instruments

Both barriers have weakened considerably. Kalshi's CFTC win established event contracts as regulated derivatives.

DWF Ventures explores more on the shift from bet to balance sheet.

Non-professional traders using AI are not necessarily guaranteed success.

Andrei Grachev explains in a discussion with RWA Week 👆

-13.4% → 40.5% → 49.1%

The Hiive 50 secondary market index tracking the top 50 pre-IPO companies has gone from underperforming the S&P 500 to nearly tripling it in two years.

What changed is that companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are approaching IPOs at record valuations, and the average time to go public has stretched to 12 years, up from 4-5 in the 1990s.

Hiive's average transaction size topped $1M last year.

The transaction size shows that the market exists, but it's built for institutional buyers. Retail demand is spilling onto on-chain alternatives.

More from DWF Ventures here.

Tokenized stocks, private equity, VC assets, all moving onchain.

May 2026 snapshot 👆

The first real-world Bitcoin transaction.

16 years later, the network looks a little different.

Different clients face different risks in the DeFi and RWA market.

Andrei Grachev breaks it down 👆

Stablecoin rails are being used, and Apr 2025 to Apr 2026 growth tells the story.

Three structurally different models for pre-IPO market exposure exist:

1️⃣ SPV-backed tokens: claim on shares, redeemable post-IPO, but redemption requires selling on private secondary markets with no guaranteed timeline

2️⃣ Synthetic contracts: no backing, oracle-pegged, permissionless, but can be exited at market subject to secondary liquidity mechanisms

3️⃣ Closed-end funds: SEC-registered or fund-structured, but with direct equity or SPV backing, and higher fees (up to 3.6% annually)

DWF Ventures breaks down the tradeoffs here.

Meet the team! Andrej Sazonov, Head of Business Development at DWF Labs, will be at Proof of Talk in Paris on June 2-3, 2026.

If you’re looking to connect around OTC, liquidity provision, investments, or partnerships, we have a short form for meeting requests: https://dwf.is/meeting

Due to limited availability, submissions will be reviewed based on suitability, and we’ll follow up with selected parties to confirm meetings.

Looking forward to connecting with you 🤝

Pre-IPO tokens on PreStocks and Ventuals are trading at persistent premiums above last known private market valuations.

Historical IPO valuations land roughly 25% above raise. Investors who entered at a 20-40% premium have a narrow margin before trades turn negative.

There are also other risks:

→ Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have condemned unauthorized tokenized exposure

→ Fund structures bundle exposure with no control over individual allocations

→ At IPO, there's no guarantee of instant liquidity. SPV-held shares require a separate liquidation process

DWF Ventures elaborates more in their article here.