Vaults Set to Shake Up $1.5 Trillion Credit Market

Grayscale's Head of Research Zach Pandl believes on-chain vaults could disrupt the $1.5T credit market, following in the footsteps of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and perpetual futures.

Pandl compared the on-chain vault market to collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), which allow investors to share interest earned from a pool of corporate loans handled by asset managers.

Instead of asset managers, these third parties are replaced by smart contracts and curators like Steakhouse or Gauntlet in the vault market.

The current vault market is worth about $7.3B, with top three curators controlling +70% of the market share.

S&P Global agrees that real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and regulatory clarity could unlock vault growth, but notes that regulation may remain a key adoption barrier.