Lucas Vogelsang | Co-Founder of Centrifuge — The Future of DeFi

In this episode of BeaconLayer Podcast, Kenzi Morikawa and Diksha Wells speak with Lucas Vogelsang, CEO and Co-Founder of Centrifuge, about one of DeFi’s most important frontiers: bringing real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain — a mission Centrifuge has pursued since the early days of Ethereum.Lucas breaks down what “RWA DeFi” looks like in practice, why it matters for scaling DeFi beyond crypto-native use cases, and what needs to change for the next wave of adoption. The conversation also explores the Polkadot ecosystem, how Centrifuge thinks about infrastructure vs. applications, and what it’s really like being a founder building through a Web3 bear market.Lucas has been passionate about computers and coding since early on. After seven years working in tech, a turning point came in 2017: he decided to take a direct swing at the financial system itself — using blockchain as the backbone for more open, programmable financial rails. That conviction became Centrifuge: a platform built to help businesses access capital against real-world value, so funding “future needs” becomes faster, more transparent, and more global.