Interview: Inside CoinShares’ Push Into Onchain Yield

Onchain push: On Wednesday, Europe’s largest publicly listed digital asset manager CoinShares announced plans to launch its first ever DeFi-powered yield product, marking the firm's expansion into the growing onchain asset management space. The move comes alongside a strategic partnership with French startup Kiln, whose Railnet solution will serve as the underlying infrastructure for the new offering.

How it works: The product offers access to a diversified strategy that allocates capital across multiple yield sources, including:

• DeFi lending protocols (Aave, Morpho, Compound)
• Tokenized funds and ETFs (Ondo, WisdomTree, Securitize)
• Institutional credit (Maple Finance)
• Market-neutral strategies (Ethena)

Illustrative example by Blockstories; not an exact representation of CoinShares’ architecture

Railnet’s open architecture brings these sources together within a single onchain vault, while CoinShares acts as the regulated portfolio manager overseeing capital allocation. The product will initially launch as a B2B2C offering for exchanges, custodians, and fintech platforms.

Growing momentum: The announcement represents the second major digital asset manager launching an onchain investment product in recent months. In January, U.S. firm Bitwise launched its first onchain vault product built on top of the lending protocol Morpho.

• Why it matters: Onchain asset management is a rapidly expanding category within crypto. Since early 2025, AUM across onchain yield strategies more than doubled to over $35 billion. This growth has been driven primarily by crypto-native capital seeking yield, with the space so far dominated by specialized crypto-native risk curators such as Steakhouse Financial and Gauntlet managing the underlying strategies.

Tailwinds ahead: But as digital assets continue to institutionalize and regulatory clarity around DeFi integration takes shape, onchain strategies are growing increasingly attractive to non-crypto-native and institutional capital, with projections placing AUM between $41 and $85 billion in 2026.

Strategic importance: “We see onchain asset management as a key third pillar of CoinShares, alongside our ETPs and active strategies. In the near term, we expect it to remain smaller than our roughly $6 billion ETP business. Over the long term, however, the opportunity is larger: the onchain risk curator segment already accounts for around $7 billion in total value locked, and we believe that, with strong execution, we can capture a meaningful share of this growing market,” told us Jérôme Castille, Managing Director at CoinShares.

Interview: In our conversation, Castille also explained why CoinShares chose Railnet over Morpho’s vault model used by Bitwise, and highlighted the types of onchain investment products likely to attract institutional capital next.

Who specifically is knocking on your door for this?

Bitwise decided to become a vault curator on Morpho. Why did you choose Railnet instead?

Do you expect this kind of product to also appeal to traditional institutional investors in the future?

What does the long-term product roadmap look like?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Onchain asset management is attracting traditional players as growth accelerates. With AUM in onchain yield strategies projected to reach between $41.6 billion and $85 billion in 2026, firms like CoinShares are entering the space to capture this expanding opportunity.
• Demand is driven by platforms sitting on idle stablecoin liquidity. Exchanges, custodians, and fintechs are seeking to generate yield and retain users, especially during periods of low trading activity when capital rotates away from crypto into traditional instruments.
• Diversification beyond crypto-native yield is becoming essential. With over 80% of DeFi lending yields moving in tandem, combining them with tokenized RWAs such as treasuries, ETFs, and private credit creates a more balanced return profile.
• New infrastructure is enabling new product categories. Unlike single-protocol vault models, Railnet allows CoinShares to allocate across DeFi lending, tokenized funds, private credit, and market-neutral strategies within a single portfolio, pointing toward "ETFs 2.0".
• Institutional adoption will start with familiar assets and expand over time. Attracting institutional capital requires blending tokenized versions of familiar instruments such as T-bills with DeFi lending to offer continuous liquidity. As institutions gain experience and observe these benefits in practice, allocations are likely to move deeper into DeFi.