Necessary coordination.
The protocol should let markets do something meaningfully harder without open settlement, shared liquidity or programmable ownership.
DeFi at Box Ventures
Open markets are crypto's killer app.
We believe decentralized finance turns blockchains into useful economic infrastructure: markets that settle openly, compose permissionlessly and keep capital productive.
Our field of view
The DeFi capital stack.
We look for protocols that make one layer of the financial system more open, more legible or more productive without hiding the risk.
ETHSettlementProgrammable, credible financial rails↗ MNTExecutionScalable access, liquidity and distribution↗ CRVLiquidityPurpose-built markets for on-chain assets↗ INJExchange infrastructureShared primitives for financial applications↗ PENDLEYield marketsMake future yield legible and tradable↗ YFIStrategy automationTurn complex yield strategies into open vaults↗ STKMarket watch / stakingProtocols we study: Ether.fi, Lido and EigenLayer↗
Our position
DeFi is not a crypto feature. It is a better way to build markets.
The long-term opportunity is larger than trading tokens. Open financial software can make ownership portable, settlement inspectable and financial products composable by default.
That future is not automatic. Protocols still inherit smart-contract, liquidity, governance, oracle and operational risk. We are bullish because those risks can be exposed and improved in public—not because they disappear.
Read the full argument ↗Where capital goes to work
One asset. Five financial jobs.
This is a conceptual path through the stack—not a recommended strategy or a claim that every step can be combined in one transaction.
- 1Settle
Start with neutral rails.
Ethereum provides programmable settlement: shared state that applications can read and contracts can act upon.
THESIS POSITION / ETH - 2Stake
Secure the network without freezing utility.
Liquid staking protocols issue transferable representations of staked assets, carrying new dependencies alongside that liquidity.
RESEARCH WATCH / LIDO - 3Coordinate
Extend security carefully.
Restaking asks whether economic security can serve more systems—and whether the added rewards justify added slashing and operator risk.
RESEARCH WATCH / ETHER.FI + EIGENLAYER - 4Price yield
Give time and yield a market.
Pendle separates principal and future yield so market participants can price different claims on the same yield-bearing asset.
BOX VENTURES PORTFOLIO / PENDLE - 5Automate
Turn strategies into open vaults.
Yearn vaults encode strategies in smart contracts, making their execution and dependencies more inspectable than a closed fund process.
BOX VENTURES PORTFOLIO / YEARN
What earns conviction
Mechanism before narrative.
Risk users can inspect.
Composability is powerful only when dependencies, liquidation paths and governance assumptions remain legible.
Demand beyond incentives.
Liquidity rewards can start a market. Durable products keep solving a problem after the subsidy becomes less generous.
DeFi futures · August 2026
Conditions, not price calls.
Our conviction gets stronger only if the underlying system becomes easier to use, safer to inspect and harder to close.
The machinery becomes boring.
Wallets, staking, swaps and vaults should hide operational friction without hiding custody, fees or failure paths.
Changes our mind: abstraction makes risk less visible, not more manageable.On-chain rates become financial inputs.
Yield markets and vault standards should help treasuries and applications reason about duration, collateral and strategy instead of chasing a headline APY.
Changes our mind: demand remains mainly incentive recycling.Markets become internet infrastructure.
Payments, savings, credit and exchange should be able to share open settlement and portable assets across products and borders.
Changes our mind: the open stack cannot compete on reliability, access or user protection.Projects with potential
What we keep studying.
Research interest, not portfolio.
These projects are included because their mechanisms matter to our DeFi thesis. Inclusion does not state or imply a Box Ventures investment.
Liquid restaking
Ether.fi
Can staked and restaked ETH remain useful across DeFi without making the underlying risk impossible to read?
We are watching: Withdrawal mechanics, operator design, restaking rewards and how clearly eETH / weETH dependencies are communicated.Liquid staking
Lido
Liquid staking can turn validator participation into a composable building block for markets, collateral and treasury operations.
We are watching: Validator diversity, oracle and governance assumptions, withdrawals, and the integrations that make stETH / wstETH useful.Shared security
EigenLayer
Restaking could let new services source cryptoeconomic security from Ethereum instead of rebuilding a validator market from zero.
We are watching: Whether real service demand justifies added slashing, operator and dependency risk.Selected DeFi portfolio
Backed across the stack.
From liquid staking and purpose-built liquidity to exchange infrastructure and yield markets.