Convergence at Consensus 2026: Institutional Interest in Blockchain

Welcome to FinTech TV.

I'm Remmy Blair.

We're coming to you from Consensus Miami 2026, and there's been plenty of institutional interest in blockchain while the big firms are eyeing the decentralized tech for a quick settlement as well as 24/7 among other benefits, but some of the challenges that they face remain on the regulatory front, and they also require privacy to. their data.

Well, joining me to weigh in is John Nahas, the Chief Business Officer for Ava Labs.

John, great to have you here.

Thank you for having me, Remy.

Great being here.

Well, you and I were talking about how consensus 2026 differs from other events that have been taking place this year.

So give us your take on what institutions are talking about on the ground in Miami.

It's a number of things, right?

I mean, I think over the Years you've seen a progression and first and foremost, what I see here is a much more diverse group of people, both from institutions and enterprises.

Back in the day used to be the innovation teams that would come and dabble.

Now you have big banks, institutions, asset managers, and everybody in between sending full teams and embracing the technology for what it was initially, I think, built for, right?

So we're seeing things that used to be.

Long term horizon projects shrinking in scale.

They want things out faster, sooner.

They want to bring new assets to their customers and their clients and also utilize the technology for their own business needs.

Yes, and speaking of which, we're almost at the halfway point of 2026.

So based on what you just mentioned here, what do you think the impact will be, especially as we try to figure out what the regulatory landscape may look like, say, a year from now?

I think at the end of the day, if you, if you take a step back to where we were last year, genius was a dream, and we've had genius come and now clarity is on the horizon, whether it passes or not is TBD, but people feel more comfortable, right?

Nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of the line that didn't exist one day.

So people are looking for solutions.

They're building products.

They're delivering.

Things that clients want that they want, and they're looking for things that allow them to have better business.

So whether new ways to monetize or to save money through operational workflows, whether they're looking for privacy, they're looking for scalability, they're looking for the features that have been kind of.

Used by incumbents and traditional actors, but while leveraging this technology.

So there's a little bit of a melding going on.

Yeah, and while I have you here, you are the CBO over at Ava Labs.

So tell us what you're focused in and what you're locked in on as we head into not just the rest of this year, but also beyond, and tell us why.

Absolutely.

So Ava Labs is the team that supports the Avalanche blockchain.

Avalanche differs from many other blockchains in the sense that others are general purpose.

One blockchains, everybody kind of competes to use the same network.

We have the ability to launch custom application or business specific or jurisdiction or compliance-specific blockchains and have interoperability between them.

So our focus from day 1, 5.5 years ago, was to tokenize the world's assets, and I think we're at that point now where the world's assets are coming on chain.

Some can come on public chains.

Some will need private chains.

Some would need permission chains.

Some will need privacy.

Some will demand privacy.

We have the customization to allow people to build the blockchain for their business or their use case or whatever it may be, I think.

We're at the end of the beginning of the first generation of blockchains, which was come build your application or business or deploy your asset on our technology.

The technology is the supporter of the business.

So our overarching goal is better business, helping companies like.

Broadridge, JP Morgan, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Detroit Pistons, Konami, FIFA, you name it, build their own businesses on blockchains, seek ways to monetize and provide better services to their customers, and as well to operationalize workflows and save, save on costs as well.

And finally, before I let you go, Consensus has um a melting pot of not just Trafi as well as Dei, and we all know that this is becoming a fast, crowded space.

So do you see rising tides actually lifting all ships here?

Absolutely.

I mean, I think for the longest time, our industry was very inward facing.

Yeah.

It was, you know, blockchain against blockchain or protocol against protocol.

A rising tide brings everybody, right?

Like I don't believe that there will be a single or a dozen blockchains.

I think there will be eventually dozens and hundreds and thousands of blockchains because the world will come unchanged.

It will become digital in the same way that it became electronic, and the blockchain rails will move value in the same way that the internet moved information a decade ago.

It's just going to take us time and that tide will rise all boats.

I mean, especially with the convergence of AI and blockchain as well.

AI agents and AI applications are going to need rails to move value.

That is what blockchain was built for from day one.

So I think we're seeing that convergence there.

We're seeing an openness to take on new technology.

I think.

The, you know, blockchain on the back end aspect is really going to start to proliferate, and we're seeing this with a lot of deployments and a lot of partners.

Well, I think that's really befitting.

You were, you use the word convergence, given the fact that the theme at Consensus 2026 is convergence.

So thank you so much, John.

I appreciate your time.

Thanks.