DeFi Falters on Real-World Asset Pricing Trust
The DeFi ecosystem is facing a new challenge: deciding who can be trusted to price real-world assets. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has been running a trial with over 40 firms, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, to represent shares and Treasuries on-chain as tokens. However, for these tokens to become usable collateral in lending markets, they need to be priced by a reliable oracle.
Currently, the utilization rate of real-world assets (RWA) in DeFi is around 7.7%, with an RWA market cap exceeding $51 billion. But only about 3.8 billion dollars' worth of these assets are actively used across DeFi protocols.
Matthew Fisher, CEO of Katana Network, explained that the choice of oracle provider is crucial in determining the reliability of price feeds. The curator or vault operator must choose the oracle, set exposure limits, and decide when liquidations trigger.