1. Complex on-chain activities are being simplified, and the technical infrastructure has matured.

2. All legacy systems are facing historic opportunities for reinvention, and new opportunities have already emerged.

3. Intent mechanisms, TG/Onchain Bots, and AI Agents must all address the issue of authorization.

On April 16, Glider completed a $4 million funding round led by a16z CSX (Startup Accelerator). Its ability to establish a foothold in the field of on-chain investing—which appears simple but is complex in practice—is attributed to the favorable winds brought by technologies such as Intent frameworks and large language models (LLMs). Nevertheless, the DeFi ecosystem as a whole indeed requires a reorganization to simplify the investment process and lower the barriers to entry.

Image Caption: History of DeFi Tool Development
Image Source: @zuoyeweb3

The era of DeFi “Legos” is over; the era of securely integrated wealth management is arriving.

In the past: Furucombo’s Journey Ended Before It Truly Began

Glider originated at the end of 2023 as an internal startup within Anagram. Its initial form was Onchain Bots, which combined different operational steps to facilitate user investments and usage.

Image Caption: Glider Feature Preview
Image Source: BusinessWire

However, this is not an entirely new model—helping users manage their investments has always been a lasting business. It was true in TradFi, and it remained true during the DeFi Summer. Currently, Glider is still in internal development, but based on the press release, its general concept can be outlined as follows:

1. Integrate existing DeFi tools, including leading projects across various sectors as well as emerging protocols, building a B2B2C user acquisition model through API connections;

2. Allow users to create investment strategies and enable sharing, making it easier to mirror investments, copy trades, or engage in group investing for higher yields.

From a technical perspective, building such a stack with the support of AI Agents, LLMs, Intent frameworks, and blockchain abstraction isn’t particularly difficult. The real challenge lies in user acquisition and trust-building.
Whenever the flow of user funds is involved, sensitivity rises. This is also the main reason why on-chain products have not yet overtaken centralized exchanges (CEXs). Most users can accept decentralization in exchange for capital safety but are unwilling to tolerate increased security risks due to decentralization.

Back in 2020, Furucombo received investment from institutions like 1kx, promoting itself as a tool to reduce user confusion when facing DeFi strategies. If we must draw a parallel, it’s most similar to today’s GMGN and other meme coin tools—except during the DeFi era, the focus was on combining yield strategies, while GMGN aims to discover high-potential, undervalued memes.

However, most users did not stick around with Furucombo. Yield strategies on-chain operate in an open market where retail investors simply cannot compete with whales in terms of server power and capital size. As a result, most profit opportunities remained out of reach for ordinary users.
Compared to the unsustainability of returns, security issues and strategy optimization were secondary. In a high-return era, there was no room for stable, conservative investing.

Today: The Era of Accessible Asset Management

Now: The civilian era of asset management

ETFs for the wealthy, ETS for retail investors

ETF tools are not limited to the stock market. Binance and other exchanges experimented with them as early as 2021. From a technical standpoint, asset tokenization ultimately gave rise to the RWA (Real World Assets) paradigm.

Image Caption: Exponential Page
Image Source: Exponential

Pushing further, how to bring ETF tools fully on-chain has become a new entrepreneurial focus. From DeFiLlama’s APY calculations and display to the ongoing operations of Exponential, it’s clear that there is real market demand for this.

Strictly speaking, Exponential functions as a marketplace for strategy sales and presentation, featuring a vast quantity of specialized, precisely calculated strategies, with decision-making assisted by both humans and AI. However, the transparency of the blockchain makes it impossible to hide high-efficiency strategies from being copied and modified, leading to an arms race and ultimately flattening out returns.

In the end, it becomes yet another tedious “big fish eats little fish” game.
Yet, it has never truly standardized or evolved into a project that redefines the market, like Uniswap, Hyperliquid, or Polymarket have.

Lately, there’s been a lot of reflection: After the end of the Meme Supercycle, can the old form of DeFi truly be revived, or is the sector’s peak a temporary ceiling—or a permanent one?
This question matters because it touches on whether Web3 is the next step in the evolution of the internet or simply FinTech 2.0.
If it’s the former, then humanity’s flow of information and capital will be fundamentally reshaped. If it’s the latter, then the story ends with platforms like Stripe and Futu Bull.

From Glider’s strategy, we can see that on-chain yields are about to transition into the era of mass asset management, similar to how index funds and 401(k) plans jointly fueled the long bull market of U.S. stocks.
With large amounts of capital and massive numbers of retail investors, the market will have enormous demand for stable returns.

This is the real significance of the next stage of DeFi.
Beyond Ethereum, there is also Solana; public chains must still undertake the mission of Internet 3.0 innovation, while DeFi should evolve into FinTech 2.0.

Glider has introduced AI assistance, but the trajectory from DeFi Pulse’s early data displays, to Furucombo’s initial experiments, to Exponential’s steady operation shows that about 5% stable on-chain yields will continue to attract a foundational user base outside centralized exchanges (CEXs).

The Future: Bringing Yield-Bearing Assets On-Chain

At this point in crypto’s evolution, only a few types of products have truly gained lasting market recognition:

• Exchanges

• Stablecoins

• DeFi

• Public blockchains

Other product types—including NFTs and meme coins—are merely temporary asset issuance models without sustainable self-sufficiency.

However, starting in 2022, RWA (Real World Assets) began taking root, especially after the FTX and UST-Luna collapses.
As Andre Cronje (AC) noted, people don’t fundamentally care about decentralization; they care about returns and stability.

Even without proactive support from administrations like Trump’s for Bitcoin and blockchain, the productization and practical application of RWAs are rapidly advancing.

If traditional finance embraced digitization and informatization, there’s no reason it would reject blockchain integration.

In this current cycle, the complexity of asset types and sources, along with the dizzying array of DeFi strategies, are major obstacles preventing CEX users from migrating on-chain.
Regardless of the truth behind “mass adoption,” at the very least, there’s significant exchange liquidity that can be absorbed:

1. Ethena is converting fee revenue into on-chain yield through alliance-based mechanisms;

2. Hyperliquid is drawing perpetual contract liquidity on-chain via LP tokens.

These two examples demonstrate that migrating liquidity on-chain is feasible.
RWA proves that bringing real-world assets on-chain is feasible as well.
Right now, the industry is witnessing an extraordinary moment:
While some claim Ethereum has “no future,” in reality, everyone is moving on-chain.
In a sense, fat protocols are not conducive to fat applications.
Perhaps this marks the final “dark night” before public chains return to their infrastructure roots and application scenarios truly flourish.

Image Caption: Yield Calculation Tools
Image Source: @cshift_io

Beyond the above products, vfat Tools has operated for several years as an open-source APY calculation tool.
De.Fi, Beefy, and RWA.xyz each have their unique focuses, primarily showcasing project APYs.
The emphasis of yield tools has increasingly shifted over time toward yield-bearing assets (YBS) and similar products.

Currently, increasing trust in AI-based tools raises the issue of responsibility distribution:
More human intervention improves reliability but worsens user experience—creating a tough dilemma.

One possible solution could be separating information flow and capital flow, building a UGC-driven strategy community, forcing project teams into competitive iteration, and ultimately benefiting retail users.

Conclusion

Glider has captured market attention thanks to a16z’s endorsement, but the long-standing issues in this space—authorization and risk—still remain.
Here, “authorization” doesn’t just refer to wallet and fund permissions; it refers to whether AI can satisfy human expectations.
If AI-driven investments lead to heavy losses, how should responsibility be assigned?

This world remains worth exploring.
Crypto, as the public space of a fractured world, will continue to thrive and evolve.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reproduced from [Zuoye Waiboshan], and the copyright belongs to the original author [Zuoye Waiboshan]. If you have any objections to the reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and the team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article represent only the author’s personal views and do not constitute any investment advice.

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