Aya Kantorovich, co-CEO of Upshift, discusses the evolution from founding team member at FalconX to building multi-chain vault infrastructure. Upshift provides vault services to wallets, exchanges, and neobanks, currently managing around 450 million TVL across custom vaults, ecosystem vaults, and protocol vaults.

The conversation covers recent security incidents in crypto, the operational advantages of on-chain vaults for traditional institutions, and the growing demand for 24-7 trading infrastructure. Kantorovich explains how vault technology enables cross-protocol yield strategies while maintaining isolated risk profiles.

Discussion extends to regulatory developments, institutional adoption patterns, and predictions for widespread acquisition activity among vault providers as traditional finance moves toward 24-7 markets and tokenized assets.

From FalconX to Multi-Chain Vault Infrastructure

Upshift evolved from August, an on-chain Prime product launched in 2022-2023 that enables cross-margin trading across OTC, options, derivatives, spot, CeFi exchanges, and DeFi positions in one interface.

"We got asked, hey, if you are aggregating health factors and positions across chains and platforms, can you also do that across protocols on chain?" - Aya explains how customer demand drove vault development.

The company currently works with largest wallet providers, exchanges, and neobanks to launch custom vaults, ecosystem vaults, and protocol vaults across multiple chains including upcoming Solana deployment.

Security Lessons and Risk Management Philosophy

Recent crypto hacks were primarily social engineering attacks rather than smart contract vulnerabilities, similar to traditional Web2 security breaches including Versal's Sunday hack.

"Security in the day and age of AI just needs to step up" - Aya notes hackers can launch thousands of agents to analyze codebases and socially engineer employees.

Upshift maintains alerting systems that notify within seconds to minutes of asset movements and creates war rooms with partners during incidents, while emphasizing they are infrastructure providers, not strategy curators.

The team rejected working with Stream Finance last year due to risk concerns, avoiding exposure when that platform wound down.

Vault Strategy Diversification and Yield Optimization

Cross-protocol USDC lending against BTC and ETH across Morpho, Aave, Kamino, and Jupiter generated 2% higher yield with 40% less rate volatility versus single protocol exposure.

"We don't believe in 15x recursive looping" - Aya explains their conservative approach while competitors dropped from 2 billion to 300 million TVL due to leveraged positions unwinding.

Focus has shifted from protocol and ecosystem vaults to distribution partners including wallets, neobanks, and exchanges seeking custom yield strategies for KYC'd users.

PayFi strategies offer 10% rates compared to traditional credit funds at 13%, creating significant cost savings for companies on large transaction volumes.

Institutional Adoption and Operational Advantages

Traditional institutions view vaults as operationally cheaper alternatives to running funds with dedicated staff, nav calculation partners, and reporting functions.

"You have something that is operationally cheaper and more seamless, operates 24-7, and enables net new markets for net new users" - Aya outlines three key institutional benefits.

Upshift works with partners like KPMG to establish best practices for regulated vaults and proper nav accounting to enable publicly traded companies to operate vaults.

"No black boxes. I cannot emphasize that enough" - all vault strategies maintain full transparency of counterparty risk and asset exposure through whitelisted, multi-signature approval processes.

24-7 Markets and the Future of Trading Infrastructure

"We're currently seeing that equities is pushing to trade 24-7" with Trump making weekend announcements when markets can't react, driving demand for continuous trading.

Traditional and crypto markets will "meet halfway" as asset issuers move on-chain for 24-7 trading while platforms like NYSE and NASDAQ adapt to compete for margins.

BlackRock's success with iBit has other institutions examining the "juicy margins" and net new users, accelerating movement toward tokenized 24-7 assets.

"All devault providers are probably getting acquisition conversations right now" because vault infrastructure becomes essential toolkit for 24-7 nav calculation and tokenized asset servicing.