KYC/AML hurdles for institutional DeFi adoption?
Been thinking a lot lately about how institutional players, especially traditional finance firms looking to dip into DeFi yield, are navigating the existing KYC/AML landscape. On one hand, the pseudonymous nature of most chains is a feature, not a bug, for many crypto natives. On the other, any regulated entity has a stack of compliance obligations that just don't map neatly onto a wallet address.
Are we seeing specific solutions emerging for this? Or is it more a case of institutions creating highly siloed, permissioned DeFi environments? Wondering if anyone has seen protocols or service providers offering robust, auditable KYC/AML solutions that are truly on-chain, or if the current approach is largely off-chain verification linked to on-chain activity. This seems like a major bottleneck for significant capital flow into the space, especially with regulatory bodies globally starting to pay closer attention to DeFi activities.
This is something I've been wondering about too. How are they even starting to bridge that gap? It feels like such a fundamental conflict between the core principles of DeFi and the regulations institutional players have to follow.