Mike Schroeder and Skyler Steinke sit down with Waseem Salim, CEO of Valdora Finance, who spent six years in crypto — including running communities globally for the Algorand Foundation — before setting out to fix what he calls the circular yield problem. Most DeFi yield comes from crypto activity feeding itself: lending, borrowing, providing liquidity. When the market slows, the yield collapses with it, because there was never real economic activity underneath. Waseem walks through Valdora's answer: vault infrastructure that routes on-chain stablecoins into real-world strategies and hands the depositor back a liquid token representing the position. He breaks down what a vault actually is versus a liquidity pool, the three things any vault has to deliver — access, control and verifiability — and the mechanics behind their stablecoin vault, where yield comes from short-duration credit facilities backed by verified business cash flows: invoice factoring, payment financing, SME lending, mostly through originators in the MENA region. The conversation also covers who does what in the stack, how a non-custodial architecture uses time locks, multisig and role separation, and Waseem's honest account of what non-custody does not remove — smart contract risk, strategy risk, oracle risk, and what happens if an originator defaults. Plus DeFi's Wild West years (all three of them admit to being in Time Wonderland at 80,000% APY), where vaults sit in three to five years, and why he thinks institutional and retail DeFi are converging faster than people expect. Chapters:00:00 Intro: Stablecoins, Vaults, and Real-World Yield00:25 From Algorand Ambassador to Global Head of Communities01:49 The ETHDenver Coffee Queue That Started It03:31 Why Valdora Exists: Three Structural Failures in DeFi05:44 What a Vault Actually Is, and the Three Things It Must Do08:20 DeFi's Wild West Years: 80,000% APY and Time Wonderland10:37 Why the Degens Were the Beta Testers DeFi Needed11:49 Olympus DAO, Gas Fees, and Lessons Paid For12:42 Inside the Stablecoin Vault: Invoice Factoring and SME Credit15:08 Curators vs. Originators: Who Does What16:40 The Roadmap: A Catalog of Vaults and 48-Hour Launches18:04 Non-Custodial by Design: Time Locks, Multisig, Role Separation18:55 Institutional Demand and Going Multi-Chain to Ethereum and BNB20:57 Who Can Launch a Vault, and the Due Diligence Behind It21:57 What Non-Custodial Does and Doesn't Remove From Risk23:36 Smart Contract Risk and the Hardening of Vault Frameworks25:10 NAV, Redemptions, and Where DeFi Meets Fund Admin27:00 Vaults in Three to Five Years: A Fund Wrapper for On-Chain Capital28:23 Who Valdora Is Built For30:34 Where to Find Waseem and Valdora Connect with Waseem Salim:Valdora: https://valdora.finance/Valdora on X: https://x.com/Valdora_financeWaseem on X: https://x.com/WaseemMSalim Alt Funds Network:Website: https://altfunds.io/Topic ideas: info@altfunds.ioBe a guest on the podcast: https://bit.ly/46X7cSQ Listen instead:Spotify: https://bit.ly/4afXcanApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4akXAUS #DeFi #Stablecoins #RWA Disclaimer:Alt Funds Network LLC and its affiliates, episode guests, and the companies they represent do not provide tax, legal, accounting or investment advice. This material has been prepared for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal, accounting, and investment professionals before engaging in any transaction or making any financial or legal decision based on your specific situation.
