Recently, I observed a quite noteworthy phenomenon.

Top-tier global asset custody banks (these institutions operate exchanges, funds, clearing systems behind the scenes, and retail investors rarely hear about them) are actually turning their clients' on-chain deposits into a programmable form. Interestingly, they are not issuing tokens nor shouting Web3 slogans; instead, they are adopting the most pragmatic approach—directly utilizing the underlying infrastructure of blockchain.

Funds still reside in bank accounts, with interest, regulation, and account relationships unchanged. The only difference is that the layers of transfer, clearing, and collateralization are now running on the blockchain.

Why do this? The pain points for these institutions are quite specific: waiting for margin calls, slow cross-system clearing, and near shutdowns during weekends and nights. The advantage of being on-chain is simple—24/7 continuous operation.

Who are the participants involved? Just looking at the list of participants reveals this is not a trial project: the parent company behind the NYSE, top high-frequency traders, market maker groups, stablecoin issuers, cross-chain protocol providers, and investment institutions focused on digital assets. This is a real trading pipeline, not a demo system for display purposes.

The most core improvement is that on-chain deposits have become programmable.

Conditional triggers enable automatic fund transfers; debt repayments automatically release collateral; no manual monitoring needed—the protocol executes itself. This automation means lower costs, reduced risks, and significantly improved efficiency for institutions handling massive volumes of transactions.

From this evolutionary direction, the development trajectory of the industry becomes clear: it’s not a confrontation of banking versus crypto industry, but rather traditional finance beginning to directly leverage the infrastructure of crypto assets to reshape itself. Processes that were originally slow, cumbersome, and bottlenecked by time are being dismantled and rebuilt.

Perhaps this is where Web3 can truly change the way finance operates—not by overthrowing, but by enabling the most in-need institutions to directly adopt it.