SmartCon Insights | Asset Management Giants: Digital Identity, Wallet Popularity, and Clear Regulation are Key to On-Chain Asset Management

Chainlink's annual flagship conference, SmartCon, opened yesterday, bringing together numerous senior representatives from traditional finance and leading DeFi protocols in New York. Among them, several executives from Wellington, Fidelity, WisdomTree, and Invesco discussed "Next-Generation Asset Management: Reshaping Infrastructure for the On-Chain Economy." Mark Garabedian, Head of Digital Assets and Tokenization at Wellington, stated that the biggest challenge facing institutions is "technological debt," namely, how to integrate new on-chain technology stacks with deeply relied-upon traditional systems. Will Peck, Head of Digital Assets at WisdomTree, pointed out that the key value of tokenized assets also includes improving user experience, not just reducing costs. His company currently manages nearly $700 million in RWA and is extremely optimistic about the prospects of tokenized money market funds, expecting such products to become one of WisdomTree's largest funds within three years. Kathleen Wrynn, Global Head of Digital Assets at Invesco, stated that the growth of stablecoins and tokenized funds, the maturity of institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure, and regulatory clarity are the three major drivers of industry development. She pointed out that cross-institutional collaboration and the development of unified standards will be the focus of the next phase. Matthew Horne, head of the Fidelity Digital Asset Management team, believes that stablecoins and tokenized money market tokens will play a central role in the on-chain financial system. Fidelity has already launched its own digital interest-bearing token and is optimistic about market expansion over the next five years. Attendees generally agreed that blockchain fragmentation is no longer a major bottleneck, and the next phase of innovation funding should shift from public chains to focusing on the construction of custody, wallet, and digital identity frameworks to ensure full composability of assets while meeting regulatory requirements. The industry needs to accelerate regulatory clarity, especially in the classification and trading compliance of crypto assets, so that asset management institutions can participate more broadly in building the on-chain economy.