Odaily Planet Daily reports that Chainlink's annual flagship conference, SmartCon, opened yesterday, bringing together numerous senior representatives from traditional finance and leading DeFi protocols in New York. Among them, several executives from Wellington, Fidelity, WisdomTree, and Invesco discussed "Next-Generation Asset Management: Reshaping Infrastructure for the On-Chain Economy."

Mark Garabedian, head of digital assets and tokenization at Wellington, said the biggest challenge for institutions is “technical debt,” which is how to integrate new on-chain technology stacks with deeply relied-upon traditional systems.

Will Peck, head of digital assets at WisdomTree, points out that the key value of tokenized assets also includes improving user experience, rather than simply reducing costs. His company currently manages nearly $700 million in RWA and is extremely bullish on the prospects of tokenized money market funds, predicting that such products will become one of WisdomTree's largest funds within three years.

Kathleen Wrynn, Global Head of Digital Assets at Invesco, stated that the growth of stablecoins and tokenized funds, the maturity of institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure, and clearer regulations are the three main drivers of industry development. She pointed out that cross-institutional collaboration and the development of unified standards will be key focuses in the next phase.

Matthew Horne, head of Fidelity Digital Asset Management, believes that stablecoins and tokenized money market tokens will play a central role in the on-chain financial system. Fidelity has already launched its own interest-bearing digital token and is optimistic about market expansion over the next five years.

Participants generally agreed that blockchain fragmentation is no longer a major bottleneck. The next phase of innovation funding should shift from public chains to the development of custody, wallets, and digital identity frameworks to ensure full asset composability while meeting regulatory requirements. The industry needs to accelerate regulatory clarity, particularly regarding the classification and trading compliance of crypto assets, so that asset management institutions can participate more broadly in building the on-chain economy.