The Future of Onchain Finance: From Manual Chaos to Automated Infrastructure

Starting With a Point of View

In the next 5–10 years, onchain finance will transform from a collection of speculative apps into a foundational, automated infrastructure layer that powers global capital allocation — much like how the internet evolved from isolated websites into interconnected cloud services.

Today’s financial systems — both TradFi and DeFi — feel outdated because they still rely heavily on constant human intervention: monitoring markets, rotating positions, and managing risks manually. DeFi has not yet fully delivered on its promise due to persistent fragmentation and complexity. However, infrastructure projects like Concrete are actively building the foundation for a future where finance runs autonomously, compounds continuously, operates permissionlessly, and scales globally.

What’s Broken or Missing Today

Several core problems continue to hold back onchain finance:

• Excessive complexity — users must manually handle bridging, swapping, farming, and hedging
• Labor-intensive manual work — tracking APYs, gas fees, and strategy rotations becomes a full-time job
• Fragmented liquidity — yield opportunities are scattered across chains and protocols, making consolidation difficult
• Poor user experience — repeated wallet interactions, layered approvals, and high risk of human error
• Hidden risks — unaudited smart contracts, oracle dependencies, and single-admin keys create single points of failure
• APY-chasing culture — prioritizes short-term speculation over sustainable, long-term compounding
• Lack of institutional structure — governance often centralized in a single multisig, not scalable for serious capital

Without robust, truly automated infrastructure, DeFi remains experimental rather than a mature financial system.

What “Onchain Finance” Could Become

The ideal future of onchain finance would look like this:

• Continuous compounding — yields are automatically reinvested without user action
• Fully automated execution — allocation, rebalancing, and hedging handled by smart contracts based on clear rules
• Risk enforced by code — exposure limits, liquidity guards, and emergency pauses are hard-coded and immutable
• Permissionless and intermediary-free — anyone can participate without mandatory KYC or custodians
• Infrastructure over apps — vaults become the default interface for capital deployment, not standalone dApps
• Users allocate capital, not manage details — the system handles execution; users focus on high-level strategy
• Composable financial primitives — yield-bearing tokens can be used across protocols without exiting yield

This is finance as a utility layer: globally scalable, permissionless, and oriented toward long-term, efficient outcomes.

How Concrete Fits Into (and Helps Build) That Future

Concrete is not just another vault product — it is purpose-built infrastructure designed to realize this vision. Key elements that position Concrete at the center of onchain finance’s evolution:

• Vaults as managed portfolios — dynamic, active allocation rather than passive wrappers
• Active onchain asset management — role separation (Allocator, Strategy Manager, Hook Manager) mirrors TradFi structures but executed fully on-chain
• One-click DeFi — single deposit triggers bridging, swapping, compounding, and rebalancing automatically
• Built-in continuous compounding — yields reinvest without additional gas costs to the user
• ctASSETs as financial primitives — yield-bearing tokens that are composable (e.g., collateral in Pendle, Morpho, lending markets, etc.)
• Institutional-grade governance — role separation eliminates single points of failure; supported by real-time monitoring (HyperNative) and accounting tools (TRES)
• Vaults as infrastructure, not products — built on ERC-4626 standards, interoperable across ecosystems (EigenLayer, Berachain, and beyond)

Concrete combines the rigor of TradFi with the openness of DeFi — delivering finance that feels reliable enough for institutions and accessible enough for retail users.

Why This Future Is Better

The benefits of this automated, infrastructure-first onchain finance are transformative:

• For users — dramatically less work, significantly higher compounding, more stable long-term returns
• For builders — standards like ERC-4626 reduce integration friction and accelerate ecosystem development
• For institutions — risk is controlled by code rather than people, transparent reporting, scalable for large volumes
• For the broader economy — capital is allocated more efficiently, access to yield becomes more equitable, speculation decreases, sustainable growth increases

This is the world where DeFi stops being an experiment and becomes the foundational layer of global finance — permissionless, automatic, and unstoppable.

If you want to see how Concrete is actively building this future, check out their site: https://concrete.xyz/

gmcrete!