Blockchains ready for institutions, lawyers hesitate: DoubleZero CEO

While blockchain infrastructure may be ready for institutional use, many legal teams at big firms remain cautious about fully integrating the technology. 

At the Token2049 event in Dubai, DoubleZero founder and former Solana head of strategy Austin Federa told Cointelegraph that today’s high-performance blockchains like Solana are technically capable of supporting large-scale institutional usage. However, lawyers need to catch up. 

“Most blockchains nowadays, especially things like Solana, are fast enough for institutions to use them,” Federa said. “It’s really more about the institutions and the institution’s lawyers getting comfortable with crypto.”

Federa added that institutional lawyers and compliance teams are still addressing regulatory concerns. The executive said this may slow adoption despite the growing regulatory clarity in key markets like the United States. 

According to Federa, technical infrastructure is no longer a primary barrier for large firms. Tools needed to support enterprise-scale activity on networks like Solana are already in place:

While crypto community members may feel like institutional adoption should be more advanced than it is, Federa said that these organizations are not quick to onboard new technologies.  

“Institutions are coming on board, but they just move really slow,” Federa told Cointelegraph. “People expect these massive institutions to move fast, but that’s just not what they’re good at.”

Until legal departments are fully satisfied with risk controls and compliance structures, Federa said meaningful adoption may unfold gradually. 

Related: DoubleZero’s alternative to public internet targets mainnet rollout in H2

Federa highlighted a growing trend of institutional participation in the crypto infrastructure space. He said that bare-metal infrastructure providers and venture capital firms have offered financial support and contributed actual fiber infrastructure to DoubleZero. 

This kind of commitment was almost unthinkable just a few years ago, he said. “Most of those companies two years ago would not have had any interest or thought it was way too legally risky to take something and contribute fiber to it.”

Unlike running a validator node, deploying fiber and infrastructure is a major commitment. Federa said institutional players now allocating serious resources to crypto-native projects reflects a shift in how traditional finance views the sector.

Despite this, he acknowledged that while institutional adoption has grown, the broader crypto product landscape isn’t fully mature. “The products are not quite there yet for the most part,” Federa said.

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